Time Anomaly
by Morena Evensong
Summary: On August 1st, 2017, a giant ship suddenly appears in the skies above New York and mercilessly destroys several buildings, including Stark Tower. The Avengers must unite in order defeat this new villain from the future before he manages to conquer Earth. In July, 1944, Amy Williams-Pond looks up at the invisible crack in the sky and fears the worst.
1. Prologue

This is my contribution to the 2017 Marvel Big Bang over on Livejournal and Dreamwith - go over and check out all the other amazing stories!

My many thanks to my betas **ShadowObsessor01** and **Dlldarkwolf** , you guys were a great help!

Also, thank you to **candream** on livejournal for the wonderful art she made to accompany this story. This includes the cover image, but also a few other pieces you can find on the journal 'fandream', just look under the tag 'art for bigbang'.

In the MCU, this story takes place after Captain America: Civil War and is AU to Spiderman: Homecoming. In Doctor Who, it takes place in some nebulous time in Series 10, before episode 5: Oxygen. Also, _Disclaimer_ : I don't own either of these franchises, just a coffeemaker and an imagination.

 **Warning:** Nonsensical science ahead! Seriously, though, this is Doctor Who and Marvel and if you stick those two things in a blender you end up reversing the polarity of the neutron flow and get radiation that gives you superpowers instead of a slow and painful death. What else are you expecting from this? Also, I'm playing a bit fast and loose with Kang the Conqueror's backstory, partially because like many recurring comic book characters, his actual backstory is _very_ long and _very_ complicated, and partially to fit him into Doctor Who cannon and what we know of Earth's future in it. Oh, and there's also some language and violence in this.

* * *

The TARDIS was unusually silent, but the air inside didn't feel abandoned. It almost never felt abandoned. Lonely occasionally, but never abandoned. Anticipation perpetually hung in the air, the space waiting for a grand, hurried, excited entrance, for the next adventure, the next wonder.

Or perhaps, it was waiting for someone to return for the small wooden box left forgotten on the console.

The doors to the TARDIS swung open and Bill hurried awkwardly through, long tendrils of an orange and pink robe trailing behind her, her posture carefully straight to keep the massive, colourful Mardi Gras float sitting atop her head from sliding down. It was a massive orange, yellow and blue monstrosity that looked a bit like a bowl of fruit sitting on top of slab of fluffy marshmallow clouds with weeds growing out of it. There were also tiny silver bells that jingled lightly as she moved.

Her wooden sandals clunked loudly as she hurried down the steps and aimed directly for the console.

"Box, box, where would I be if I was a box?" she muttered to herself as her eyes skimmed the cluttered console. "Not left behind because _someone_ forgot to mention to someone else that they needed to bring it with–aha!"

In her excitement, Bill moved her head just a bit too abruptly and the headpiece began to tilt dangerously to the left. She immediately froze as both her hands shot up to hold it steady. Carefully straightening her posture again, she adjusted it slightly until it was once again balanced on top of her head, barely breathing the entire time. Then she released it and oh so slowly pulled her hands away. The headpiece remained balanced.

Bill breathed a very small sigh of relief. "I am _never_ agreeing to wear anything before I've seen it ever again," she vowed.

Crisis averted, Bill then clacked her way around the console and grabbed the wooden box. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, gleaming with curiosity as she wondered at what could be inside that was so important she'd had to come back for it. With the Doctor, almost anything was possible after all.

A few moments later, she mentally shook herself out of her thoughts. The Doctor would begin to wonder where she'd gotten to soon. Or else get distracted with something new and forget he'd sent her back to the TARDIS for the box he'd forgotten to tell her she need to take with them in the first place. Which meant he was also likely to wander off without bothering to leave her a message or some sort of directions and then she'd have to look for him on an alien planet, in the middle of their Spring something something festival...

Bill hurried to the entrance to the TARDIS. She was half-way up the steps when a phone rang.

She froze.

It rang again, a shrill sound that was familiar, and so almost-nostalgic that it felt alien even inside the TARDIS. Especially inside the TARDIS. Or perhaps not. The Doctor was, after all, a collector of odds and ends. A rotary phone wouldn't be the strangest thing she'd seen here.

It rang again.

Caution warring with curiosity, Bill descended back down the steps and then slowly approached the console once more. She was ready for the next ring and able to immediately pin-point its origin on one of the sides to the right of the door.

Sitting nestled innocently in a gap in the TARDIS console was a black phone, not a digital piece anywhere near it.

She stared at it. "I'd swear that wasn't there this morning," she said out loud even as she wondered what sort of person would even have the number.

The phone rang, making Bill jump despite having expected the sound. Mentally berating herself for making a phone – of all the silly things – push her so off-kilter, Bill finally picked up the receiver and cautiously brought it to her ear.

"Uh, hello?" she said.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. And then a woman's voice with a slight Scottish lilt said: _"You're not the Doctor."_

"No, I'm not," Bill replied, relieved that the dialing through to the TARDIS was at least intentional. "I'm Bill. The Doctor's not here right now." She paused and bit her lip. "Do you need me to fetch him?"

" _Ah, no, I don't have time for that. Just tell him that Amy called. Amy Pond. Tell him he needs to get to New York on the 3_ _rd_ _of August in the year 2017. There's a time traveller named Kang trying to take over the world in order to change the future. Have you got that?"_

Bill felt her eyes widen in horror. "New York, August 3rd, 2017. Time-traveller trying to take over the world and change the future."

" _Good. Oh, and Bill? Also make sure you tell the Doctor that there's a crack across the sky."_

"Uh, I'm not sure–"

"– _He'll know what that means."_

"Right, good then. I'll pass on the message."

" _Thanks Bill. I'm sure I'll see you soon."_

"Yeah, see you, uh, Amy."

All Bill heard next was a dial tone. Stunned, she stared at the phone in her hand for a few seconds, questions upon questions spinning around in her head. Her hand closed around the box in her hand and she took a deep breath, banishing the questions away until later, once she had the chance to ask them. If she ever got that chance.

Maybe she could ask this mysterious Amy once they met. Assuming they met. As Bill hurried back up the TARDIS steps, she decided then and there that she wouldn't let the Doctor weasel out of explaining who this Amy was and why she had the phone number to the TARDIS.

And, while he was at it, why he hadn't given _Bill_ the number.

When Bill exited the TARDIS, she was nearly bowled over by a rushing, screaming crowd. She stepped to the side only just able to keep her elaborate headpiece on her head. Looking up above the crowd, she saw smoke billowing up to the sky from several places that weren't the city centre with its large, official bonfire.

"Seriously?" she exclaimed to the universe at large. "I was barely gone ten minutes!"

Bracing herself for the onslaught of people, Bill ran forward, pushing her way through the colourful, panicked crowd towards where she'd left the Doctor. Her journey stalled slightly as one of the curlier weeds in her headdress got caught in another woman's bright red curly streamers. After a minute's worth of futile attempts to gently untangle the two headdresses, Bill finally just reached up and grabbed her weed, tearing it off with a frustrated yank. Then she continued on her quest to locate the Doctor.

Thankfully, he hadn't gone far and the single white-haired man standing on top of an abandoned stall one hand touching the side of his large sunglasses as he looked towards the billowing smoke was fairly easy to spot even in the chaos.

"Doctor, what's going on?" Bill asked when she reached him.

"Ah, Bill," he said, barely sparing her a glance. "You're here. Good. Have you got the box?"

She blinked up at him. "The box? Yeah, I've got the box. Does it have anything to do with this?"

The Doctor paused. "Well, no, not really. However we shall need it after we've dealt with this little interloper. Parisian truffles are difficult to find in this part of the galaxy, thus making the perfect gift for the Head Priest. Unless of course the temple gets caught up in the destruction in which case more for us."

A loud crash in the distance caught Bill's attention. A quick scan of her immediate area revealed a wide barrel standing next to a pile of sacks a few feet away. Bill carefully placed the headpiece onto the ground and then awkwardly climbed up onto the barrel – the wooden sandals she was wearing were clearly not designed for climbing (they were, in fact, barely designed for walking). From her new vantage point, Bill could see several partially-demolished houses in the distance and several bright pink tentacles pulling a large bulbous body over another one, which was already beginning to crumble in the creature's grip.

"Bloody hell! What is that, Doctor?!" Bill paused as sunlight hit the creature's skin. She gaped. "And... is-is it _sparkling_?!"

"Well, technically speaking, the light's refracting off the carbon-based crystals that have grown on its skin from mineral and water deposits during its decade-long hibernation in the caves that run beneath this city. The blic'taquess is a fascinating creature, you see–"

He was interrupted by another loud crash as a house in another part of the town broke apart and a second set of tentacles erupted out of its broken corpse, these every bit as pink as the first set and even more sparkly.

"But we can call it sparkling if you prefer," the Doctor interrupted himself. Raising an eyebrow, he then looked towards the newly-arrived creature and slid his left finger along the top of his Raybans. "Oh, now that _is_ interesting," he said with barely-concealed glee. He jumped down from the stall. "Come along, Bill, I need to take a closer look."

Bill rolled her eyes. "Of course you do," she said before awkwardly climbing down from her barrel perch.

Once on the ground, she took off after the Doctor, leaving her elaborate headdress behind without a single thought.


	2. Part One

He opened his eyes and then immediately closed them again, groaning as light stabbed directly into his irises. Rolling over onto his side, Steve noted that the ground he was laying on was hard, like paved cement. There was also a very distinct odor of days-old garbage and cat urine. And burnt electrical wires.

As the pounding in his head slowly began to subside enough for him to form a more coherent thought, Steve tried to remember what he'd been doing that could've left him waking up in an alley. Had the CIA caught up with them again? Or was it those guys with the circle patches?

A minute passed and Steve once again ventured to open his eyes. The experience was considerably less painful this time, giving him his first real look at the alley. It was a rather standard New York alley, dimly lit and full of trash. He'd seen plenty just like it in his youth. Although... despite it's rather ordinary appearance, something felt... off.

He was laying at the back end of the alley, a five-story brownstone walk-up to his left and some sort of small store to his right. There wasn't a logo or name on the plain wooden door so he assumed it was one of the few small, independent places holding its own against the many chain store moguls. Someone on the top floor of the brownstone was playing big band music and he could faintly make out several radios. Beyond the alley, he could hear voices as people went about their day, punctuated with some rather loud car engines.

Then something moved behind him and Steve whirled around into the crouch even as the something let out an agonized groan. Metal sung as it hit concrete ground beside him and Steve froze, realizing that he was gripping a leather handle in his right hand where for over a year there'd been nothing but empty air and a memory. He looked down, his eyes widening as he saw that his shield really was in his hand.

Suddenly, it all came back to him.

His head snapped up and he staggered to his feet. "Tony!" he called out gently, knowing his temporary ally's headache wouldn't be disappearing as quickly as his had.

He could just make out Tony's hunched-over figure in the darkness. It let out another groan and hands came up to cover his face. The sudden movement was immediately followed by a small cry of pain and then Tony's arms came down to cradle his injured ribs. Beside him, Steve saw the dented casing of the device that had knocked them out and transported them to this alley.

Someone gasped. Steve was instantly on his feet and facing this new threat.

It was a child. A boy of about twelve or so stood just inside the alley staring at him with wide eyes. Steve's eyes widened as he took in the boy's appearance: brown shorts held up with red suspenders that stood out on his white and blue striped shirt, all topped off with a brown tweed cap. Steve felt his breath stutter in his lungs even as his heart cried out for the sight that was so nostalgically familiar to him.

"Timothy!" a woman's voice called out angrily.

The boy looked over his shoulder. "Gosh mom, look, it's Captain America!"

A woman appeared at the mouth of the alley, eyes flashing with anger from beneath the shadow of a navy beret as she glared at the boy. Her eyes briefly flickered over in Steve's direction, momentarily widening in surprise when she saw him.

Steve, for his part, felt frozen to the spot from the moment he spotted her. From the half veil net on her hat, to the white polka-dotted navy skirt with bright red collar, and matching white gloves with small navy polka-dots, he saw a different woman standing her place, wavy brown hair being gently rustled by the wind as she glared with a similar fire in her eyes. The stance of a woman who didn't take nonsense from anyone, and certainly not from any man.

The woman looked away, turning her attention back to her son, her eyes narrowing once more. "Which does not in the slightest excuse you from rushing foolhardily after bright flashes of light when you had no idea what caused them!" she snapped.

Steve blinked, the Scottish lilt in her voice easily banishing the image his mind had conjured up.

"But mom," the boy whined loudly as he gestured for emphasis. "It's Captain America!"

His mother rolled her eyes. "First of all, you didn't know that before rushing into danger and, second of all, lower your bloody voice! If Captain America's hiding in a dirty alley, then he'd obviously on some secret assignment. Do you want to broadcast his location to all the Nazi spies following him?"

The boy instantly went silent, his eyes widening in horror and his lips sealing shut so tightly it made the corners of Steve's lips quirk in amusement.

Which was when Tony decided to finally attempt to get up, his movements loud and clumsy, and punctuated with another groan. Certain the mother and son were no danger to them, Steve turned his back on them and went to help Tony up. His former team member accepted his help, but froze for a moment and blinked in confusion when he realized who was helping him up. Then his unfocused eyes darted around to scan the alley.

"Oh dear, you look terrible!" the woman suddenly exclaimed from beside him. And then she walked over to Tony and examined the large bruise forming above his left temple. "You should see a doctor, I think."

"No, we can't," Steve said quickly. Even Tony turned to blink at him in confusion. Steve cleared his throat, suddenly thankful Tony had been caught without the suit because that would've been much more difficult to explain away. "I'm afraid you've guessed correctly, ma'am. My friend and I are on a top-secret mission for the war effort. No one can know we're here." Seeing Tony open his mouth to speak, he added: "It would be really bad if the Nazis managed to find us."

Beside him, Tony stiffened and then cursed quietly under his breath.

The woman, however, barely blinked, almost as though she'd been expecting the answer.

"Of course, Captain. I completely understand. So I assume you have a safehouse to get to then?"

Steve winced. "Uh, not exactly."

"There was a bit of unexpected complications with a piece of tech our enemy had developed," Tony jumped in, to Steve's relief. This sort of subterfuge had never come naturally to Steve and he hated the idea of lying to this woman who only wanted to help. "But I'm sure we'll figure something out!"

Tony ended his incredibly vague explanation with one of his signature devil-may-care grins. The woman looked amused.

"I'm sorry, you look somewhat familiar..." she said.

Tony stepped forward and held out his hand. "I'm Tony, Tony Stark" he said. "You've probably heard of my cousin, Howard?"

"Ah, yes, your cousin, of course. I can see the family resemblance quite clearly now." The woman looked amused as she shook his hand. "I'm Amy Williams, and this, as you've no doubt already guessed, is my son, Timothy. And if you're looking for a place to hide out, I think we can help you with that." She turned to her son. "Timothy, go run home and grab your old trolley. I think Ben might've thrown some of his baseball equipment inside. We'll also need that thick grey blanket from the cupboard, your father's old winter coat and one of his older hats, the brown one with the blue stripe should do. Ask Beth to help you if you can't find anything. Have you got that?"

Timothy nodded. "Sure thing, mom."

"Oh, and hurry back, but _don't run_. That would draw attention to you, understand?"

"Mrs Williams, this really isn't necessary," Steve tried to protest. "We don't want to cause you any inconvenience–"

"–Nonsense!" the redhead cut him off. "There's a war on and it is our duty to do everything we can to help."

Timothy turned to Steve, with all the solemness a twelve-year-old could muster. "Don't worry, I won't let you down, sir!" he insisted, his whole being shining with determination.

The corners of Steve's lips twitched as he gave in graciously. He gripped him on the shoulder and squeezed. "Then we're counting on you, son."

The boy grinned proudly and then ran off to complete his assigned mission.

His mother watched him go with pride shining in her eyes – along with a hint of amusement. Then she turned to them. "Well, I'll just go wait with the groceries. It'll look less suspicious that way. When Timothy returns, we can load up your equipment and cover it with the blanket. Shouldn't look too odd with the groceries in the cart as well. Then we'll go on ahead and I trust the two of you can follow discretely behind us?"

Steve nodded. "Yes, that shouldn't be a problem. Thank you."

The smile she sent him was slightly impish. "Well, it'll certainly make for an interesting story to tell after the war is over."

"Most definitely," Steve agreed.

As Mrs Williams made her way back to the street to wait for her son, Steve turned to Tony.

"So, I guess you didn't manage to turn Kang's device off," he said dryly.

Tony flashed him an irritated glare. "Noticed that did you?" he said. Then he sighed and rubbed his temples against what had to be an absolutely devastating headache. "Damn, sometimes I hate always being right."

"You're not always right," Steve pointed out mildly.

Tony froze. "Well, I was this time," he snapped a moment later. "We're just lucky it transported us to a time when that red, white and blue getup of yours can actually be useful."

Steve grit his teeth, but refused to let himself be baited. The last thing they needed was to argue in front of the kind woman who was so willing to help them. Taking a deep breath, he gestured towards the slightly charred device beside Tony.

"Do you think you can fix it?"

Tony made a face. "I really, really hope so. Won't know for certain, though, until I can open it up and get a look at it." He side-eyed Steve. "That was quick thinking with the top secret mission story, by the way."

Steve chuckled. "Actually, Mrs Williams was the one who started it. I just played along."

"Ah. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense."

Steve glared at him. Tony ignored it and went to kneel by the device to inspect the damage. It was, quite possibly, a thinly-veiled excuse to no longer interact with Steve. Steve let him get away with it.

* * *

Smuggling the two men into her home had been relatively simple. The subterfuge had probably only been slightly necessary, but Amy, of all people, knew all about the necessity of acting a part. Most of her adult life had been an act of one sort or another.

Thankfully, the children had taken to the story with solemn understanding – and some not-so-hidden enthusiasm – the boys giving up their shared bedroom to their unexpected guests without any complaints. They even helped clean up after dinner, though Amy had to stop them from badgering Captain America and Tony Stark for stories even though the two men looked more amused than irritated by three incredibly inquisitive children.

Well, Beth was mostly a young lady now, and Ben a young man, but sitting at a table with their hero made the maturity they normally took pains to cultivate vanish like magician's smoke.

The house was quiet now, with Amy's bedside lamp the only lone light shinning in the darkness behind her as she looked thoughtfully out the window. Outside, only streetlights illuminated the night as most of New York slept. It wasn't an oppressive darkness and Amy actually found it rather soothing. It allowed her thoughts space to leisurely churn inside her head.

Rory was working an overnight shift at the hospital so he didn't know about their guests yet, but she wasn't overly worried about his reaction. Her husband was nothing if not capable of rolling with any punches sent his way. He'd done more than enough to prove that.

No, his reaction wasn't what was keeping her up and leaving her staring up at the sky. It was the possibilities, the quiet rekindled hopes their guests' presence and the device they brought with them that were keeping her up.

Well, that was one of the things keeping her up.

A light summer breeze blew against her bare arms. Amy shivered, but it wasn't from the cold. Her jaw clenched in an effort to remain composed, though nothing could stave off the bone-deep dread she felt as she stared up at the sky.

Invisible to everyone else, the jagged crack that hung in the sky stared mockingly back, an omen of future disaster.


	3. Part Two

It happened like with the Chitauri: sudden and without any warning. Except this time not even the superheroes, or the shadowy pseudo-government and quasi-military organizations had had any warning. There was no huge portal in the sky to herald their appearance. There was just a warm summer's day with bright blue sky peeking out from behind a layer of slightly gray clouds. And then there were giant ships floating in the skies above New York.

Their appearance was so sudden it took a few minutes for the city to figure out what was going on. A few minutes during which New York stood uncharacteristically still, as its inhabitants stared up at the sky at the long green shapes that hovered just above the top of the buildings. The largest was long and thin, pointed at the front and with two thick fins jutting out of the sides at the back, making it look like a giant sword pointed threateningly towards the heart of the city. Four more smaller green ships hovered beside it, their more uniformly oval-shaped bodies covered in ugly, yellow lights and purple stripes.

When the smaller ships began to split apart and fly down towards the city, the streets erupted in panic.

Tony had been on the phone with Pepper when the car had come to such an abrupt stop that it threw him forward and made him splash some of his martini all over the Gucci suit jacket he was wearing.

"Oh great, just fantastic," he muttered looking down at the wet stain. Walking into another board meeting reeking of booze was just what he needed now that he was trying to clean up his image.

" _Tony, what is it?"_

Tony sighed. "I miss Happy. His driving was flawlessly smooth without taking forever to get... wait a minute..." He frowned at the halted traffic he could see outside his window. "There seems to be some sort of traffic jam or something. Shit, it's probably an accident."

Just then the intercom came on with a slight crackle. _"Mister Stark, sir, you should probably look out the window."_

His eyebrows rose even as he rolled down the window to do exactly that. The dark shadow covering half the street wasn't difficult to spot. Slowly, he looked upwards, higher than the top of Stark Tower (because, of course, he got stalled in traffic within walking distance of the Tower).

" _Tony?! What's going on? Tony!"_

"Uh, Pep, that flight you and Happy are supposed to be getting on in three hours to come home... you might wanna postpone it," he said absently as he got out of his car to get a better look at the ship he saw floating above the city.

" _You want me to postpone my trip back to New York? Why? Tony, what the hell is going on?"_

"I'll call you later."

" _To–"_

He'd barely hung up on Pepper when he was already hitting speed dial on the next number. As he waited for it to be picked up, he activated the beacon in his cufflinks that would summon his suit to him.

" _Yes, Mister Stark, I can see it and I've already begun evacuating everyone in the building into the basement bunker,"_ said Maria Hill in a bored tone when she finally picked up.

"Oh, well good then. I'm glad that's being taken care of. Have you–"

"– _Yes, I've also alerted the Avengers as to the situation and am in the process of getting a call through to their UN liaison."_

Tony sometimes wondered why he even bothered trying to check up on Maria; she clearly adhered to Fury's policy of being ultra-paranoid and triple-prepared. She was like a super boy scout, only one who was female and carried a gun – usually more than one.

"Good job, Maria. Just, uh, continue doing what you're doing. Once my suit gets here, I'll see if I can get a closer look to figure out what we're dealing with."

" _Intelligence gathering is good, just remember you can't act without the permission of the UN!"_

"Yeah, yeah I know. But if those things start attacking people, I'm not gonna just stand by twiddling my thumbs! Ross and the UN can go bite me."

" _Why, Mister Stark, it almost sounds like you're threatening to disregard the legally-binding word of those accords you signed."_

Tony winced. "Oh not at all, I'm just stating a fact. And that fact is that I won't stand around and watch people die, so maybe the UN subcommittee or whatever should hurry up with its decision-making."

He could practically feel the eyeroll Maria was mentally making. _"If that's all, Mister Stark, I think my call to our liaison has just gone through."_

"Yeah, that's all. Good luck."

Maria Hill hung up without another word. Which was when two of the four ships surrounding the giant phallic-shaped mothership suddenly flew off.

Tony flattened himself against his car to avoid getting swept up in the chaos that followed. He scrambled onto the trunk even as he dialed the next number on his speed dial, his eardrums protesting against the high-pitched screams from the crowd. In the distance, he could see light reflect off the Iron Man suit as Friday flew it out of Stark Tower.

His phone call was picked up by Rhodey. _"Hey Tony. If you're calling about the giant-ass space ships or whatever hovering above New York, then, yes, we know. Maria sent us an alert. Also, it's all over the news, Twitter, and Instagram. Do you have anything new to add?"_

Tony huffed. "It's like everyone can read my mind today. And, no, not yet. Except that two of the smaller ships just flew off somewhere. But soon, Jelly Baby, soon I'll have more. The suit's already on its way."

He could see it passing under the shadow of the spaceship.

" _Uh, just make sure you don't engage the ship until we get UN sanction."_

Once again, Tony rolled his eyes. "Seriously, what is with everyone today? When exactly have I gone against the UN Accords that, I may add, I was a strong proponent of in the first place?"

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. _"Like within a week of them being signed."_

"That doesn't count. Ross told me that we needed to get Cap and bring him home. I was only going along with his orders. Besides, the Accords hadn't been fully ratified yet at that point."

" _I don't think you quite understand how chain of command works."_ A pause. _"Wait, Tony? I think something's going on outside..."_

On the other end of the phone, Tony heard a loud crash. "Rhodey? Rhodey, what is it? What's going on?"

" _Hang on, Tony, I've gotta go check this out."_

He looked up, glad to see that the suit was less than thirty seconds away, so close he could practically smell the polish and mechanical oil. Behind the suit, a yellow laser beams shot out from the two remaining smaller spaceships. On the other end of the phone Tony heard yelling and an explosion.

Tony dropped his phone. The suit landed next to him, but Tony didn't acknowledge it. He was too busy staring in disbelieving horror as Stark Tower blew apart as though it were made of nothing but toothpicks and krazy glue.

* * *

Steve sat silently staring at the innocuous black flip phone in his hands, feeling the vibrations of the plane as he listened to the sounds of its engines. He willed the phone to ring, just as he had for the past hour. Part of him hoped it wouldn't ring, because that would mean that things weren't as bad as they'd looked in the initial news broadcasts. Before they'd all fallen silent.

He didn't dare call the only other number on this phone. What if it rang at the wrong time, gave someone's position away?

What if no one answered it, or the small automated voice said it couldn't connect the call?

The mood on the plane was anxious, worried, as most of their small group had relatives and friends in New York City. Sam had a cousin who worked in one of the office buildings near Stark Tower. And then there were, of course, all those who'd worked at the Avengers' base and Stark Tower itself.

Steve rubbed his face with his left hand, his right still resolutely hanging on to the phone. If anyone could find a way around whatever electronics blockade the alien spaceships had created, it was Tony Stark.

The footsteps coming up the aisle towards him were barely audible, but Steve heard them anyway. They stopped beside him and he looked up. The King of Wakanda looked grave.

"No news?" Steve asked, already knowing the answer by the look on T'Challa's face.

The other man shook his head. "No, I've spoken to my ambassador, but he had little to add to what we already know. One of the two ships that attacked the Avenger's base seems to be headed towards Washington. Although there was, apparently, one other building destroyed during the attack on New York. An office building with no obvious connections to either Stark Industries or the Avengers."

Steve frowned. "That's strange. Maybe the aliens had reason to believe there was a connection?"

T'Challa shrugged. "I do not know, however I've asked my people to look into it. The consulate is also dispatching a small force to New York as we speak to gather more information. They might be able to provide us with an update before we arrive."

"Thank you. For everything."

The King of Wakanda nodded to him in acknowledgment and turned to make his way back to his seat at the front of the plane.

Which was when every single screen on the plane suddenly turned on. Steve jumped, exchanging a startled glance with T'Challa. The other man quickly hurried towards the front while Steve looked back to the static-lined blue screen. The blue screen was gone within the blink of an eye and he found himself, instead, looking at the face of a man wearing some sort of protective headgear that looked like it belonged to a futuristic hazmat suit that was purple and green with a blue-tinted face window.

" _Greetings, primitive apes of the twenty-first century. I am Kang the Conqueror and I come to you from the distant future. You have no chance of overcoming my vastly superior technology and so I recommend that you give up quietly. Do so and you have my word no more harm shall come to any of you. To that end, I demand all world leaders surrender to me on behalf of their respective countries in person. Any country that refuses to comply will have their capitol city erased from the map."_

The man paused for emphasis, though his smug deep booming voice continued to echo in Steve's ears.

" _Oh, and I also demand the unequivocal surrender of the Avengers as well as the Secretary of the United Nations. And please do keep in mind that I have studied my history thoroughly and thus will know if anyone tries any sort of substitutions. I trust I do not have to repeat the punishment for anyone who attempts to trick me in any way. You have three days to comply."_

The screens went blank as abruptly as they'd turned on before. Steve stared at the blank television screen, seeing only his own wide-eyed, horrified expression reflected back at him.

"Well, fuck," he heard Clint say.

"Hey, if he's demanding the Avengers surrender to him, that probably means he doesn't have them and that they're not dead, right?" Scott pointed out a few minutes of silence later.

"That is good, yes?" Wanda asked.

Steve took a deep breath and stood to face his team, his small group of fugitive heroes. "It's the best news we've heard all day," he said. "The question, is what do we do from here?"

"We sure as hell don't surrender," said Sam. "I didn't surrender to terrorists, or Nazis, or supervillains, or Tony Stark, and I sure as fuck ain't surrendering to time-traveling asshole conquerors with blue-tinted front view windows!"

"Here, here," said Clint with a murderous twinkle in his eye.

Steve smirked. "Then I guess we'd better come up with a plan."


	4. Part Three

Tony slumped forward at the table, his whole body curled around his borrowed mug and the hot dark liquid inside masquerading as coffee – or at least as curled up as his ribs would allow. It smelled like coffee, but it tasted like bitter mud. Steve had warned him about wartime rations and the inaccessibility to anything high quality unless one had very good connections and a lot of money, but Tony hadn't quite appreciated what that would mean until he'd had his first taste of coffee.

He had managed to not immediately spit it out, but it had been close.

A plate of eggs and toast was placed in front of him and Tony blinked at it for a moment. He then looked up at the oldest son – he was pretty sure his name was Brad, or Ben, or something like that – and tried to muster up a smile despite feeling only mostly human.

"Thanks, kid," he croaked and then cleared his throat.

"You're welcome," the boy answered with a shy smile and then left to return to the kitchen.

Tony watched him go, automatically bringing the coffee to his lips and taking a sip. He made a face at the taste, but swallowed it down anyway. To its credit, it was strong enough to potentially wake the dead.

"Do you suppose they're all actually hers?" Tony asked Steve quietly.

He wasn't entirely sure where the youngest boy, Timothy, was, but both Mrs Williams and the other two kids were in the kitchen helping with breakfast and therefore out of earshot.

"Could be adopted," Steve suggested lightly. "Between the depression and the war, there are a lot of orphans in New York right now."

Tony nodded. "Or she's been married a couple of times."

"Or that."

They fell quiet as Mrs Williams daughter – who had introduced herself as Bethany, but Tony couldn't help notice that her mom and her brothers called Beth – walked out of the kitchen carrying two more plates. One was piled high with food. She placed it in front of Steve with a sunny smile and then sat down in the space beside him with the other plate.

Tony predicted Bethany would be a heart-breaker one day, assuming she wasn't already. Her face still held the roundness of youth, but between long dark silky hair, striking green eyes and full red lips, she was the sort of girl that would inevitably turn heads just by walking into a room. From what he'd been able to tell, she also had her mother's resolute, no-nonsense temperament despite looking absolutely nothing like Mrs Williams.

She also looked like neither of her brothers. Ben, with his somewhat stocky figure and light blond hair couldn't have been more different in temperament either. And Timothy... well, Timothy was about as excitable as most twelve-year-olds and while his hair was also blond (though a few shades darker than Ben's), he was scrawny with much pointier features than the other two. He almost looked like an elf gone undercover in a barely passable disguise.

Moments later, Ben walked in holding two more plates. He placed one down in front of an empty spot and sat down with the second just as Tony heard the front door open. Timothy's excited voice filled the air, covering most of the sounds of whoever had come home with him, although judging by the quiet, deep one-word grunts it was a man. Mrs William's husband perhaps?

"Your timing couldn't be more perfect!" Mrs Williams called out as she walked into the small dining room with two more plates. "We're in the dining room!"

"The dining room?" a male voice called back, his voice definitely carrying tones of England, though none of Mrs William's Scottish lilt. "Why are we in the dining room?"

"Because we've got guests, dad," Timothy immediately answered him. "I told you that already, geez."

"Right, yes, of course you did." A man walked into the room, his short brown hair slightly disheveled and his eyes bloodshot with exhaustion. He wasn't a small man, but he was built more like Tony than he was Steve (it made Tony wonder where Mrs Williams had managed to find clothes to fit Steve). He put a hand over his mouth as he yawned widely. "Sorry, it's been a long night."

He paused when he noticed Tony and Steve. His eyes widened. "Oh, you're–"

"–It's Captain America, dad!" Timothy exclaimed with barely-controlled excitement. "And that's Tony Stark. He's Howard Stark's cousin. You remember Mr Stark, right dad? He's the man who made that flying car! They're on a top secret mission. Isn't that swell, dad?"

Timothy's father snorted softly. "That car didn't fly," he retorted. "It barely hovered."

"But I'll bet you've never seen a better one!" Timothy insisted with an indignant huff.

Mrs Williams rolled her eyes at them. "Captain Roger, Mister Stark, I'd like you to meet my husband, Rory Williams."

Tony stood to shake the other man's hand. "It's great to meet you, but please call me Tony," he said with a grin. "Both of you. Being called Mister Stark, just makes me think of my dad."

Mister Williams chuckled. "Yes, I imagine it would," he said with a twinkle of amusement in his eye. "In that case, it's a pleasure to meet you, Tony. I'm Rory."

"And you can call me Amy," Mrs Williams added.

After Steve had also introduced himself they sat down to breakfast. Tony found he was surprisingly hungry and polished off both his breakfast and three cups of the black sludge. Apparently, it had the magical ability to become less noxious through continued consumption.

Once everyone had eaten, Rory excused himself to catch a few hours of sleep. "Unless you need me for something?" he asked Amy.

"Nah, I've got it," she said as she cleared the table. "Timothy will show Tony the workshop where we took that device of theirs."

"Device?" Rory asked.

"Something top secret they stole from the Nazis."

Rory's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. "Well, goodnight then."

Amy laughed at his expression and kissed him quickly on the lips. "Goodnight, luv."

"Goodnight, dad!" three voice chorused.

"Well, guess I should be heading to baseball practice," said Ben, though he sounded somewhat reluctant.

Steve's eyes lit up. "You play baseball?" he asked.

Ben froze and then licked his lips. "Yeah, I do."

"Say, you don't mind if I tag along, do you? Just to watch, I mean." He turned to Tony. "You don't need me for anything, do you? I was thinking I should do some, uh, scouting around the area."

Tony rolled his eyes. The good captain's motives were entirely transparent. But he also had a point: Tony really didn't need him at the moment. He was fairly certain he could fix Kang's time transportation device and Steve would only be in his way while he worked on it.

So, he waved Steve off. "Yeah, yeah, go ahead."

Steve's eyes lit up. "Great!"

Ben's eyes also lit up. "Gosh, you like baseball, Captain?"

Steve grinned. "I love baseball. Woulda done anything to have been able to play when I was your age, but I was too small and sickly to run around the field."

"That sounds awful!" Ben declared, and it was by far the loudest grouping of words Tony had heard from the kid. "I can't imagine not being to play."

"It _was_ awful." And then Captain America's eyes began twinkling with mischief. "My friend Bucky and I used to sneak in to watch the Dodgers practice."

"Wow, really?"

"Perhaps you should continue this conversation on your way to the field?" Amy cut in dryly.

Tony chuckled. "Not a baseball fan, I take it?" he asked her after the two had left.

"God no," she replied. "But Ben loves it and he's actually rather good, so I've developed a... tolerance for the sport."

Tony turned to Timothy. "What about you? You like baseball?"

Timothy shrugged. "It's okay."

"Spoken like a guy who loves his brother, but doesn't understand what he sees in the sport," Tony noted with amusement.

The kid grinned. Tony finished off the rest of the coffee in his cup with a flourish and then stood dramatically. And then winced as his ribs twinged with the movement. He recovered quickly.

"But enough about baseball, now it's time for science!" he declared with much less flourish. "Onwards, Timothy, and show me this workshop!"

Timothy giggled gleefully and scrambled out of his chair. "Sure thing, Mister Stark! Just follow me."

Amy's laughter followed them out of the dining room as Tony followed Timothy to the workshop.

* * *

The phone's ringing echoed through the house. Cursing to herself, Amy left her typewriter and ran out of her office in the hopes she might just be able to silence it before it woke Rory up. It was a pipe-dream, of course, as both of them were light sleepers born from necessity, but worth a shot regardless.

A quick glance into the living room as she passed by told her Timothy was probably still in the workshop with Tony Stark since he wasn't in his usual spot glued to the radio for the mid-morning news broadcast. Beth had, of course, left hours ago for the factory.

Amy caught the phone mid-ring. "Hello, Williams residence," she said.

" _Ah, Amelia, it is good to hear your voice again my dear."_

She smiled at the familiar voice on the other end of the phone line. "It's good to hear yours as well, Winston. I see you got my message."

" _I did at that. And, before you ask, yes I'm calling from_ _ **the phone**_ _."_

Amy found the over-dramatic way he referred to the simple black phone endlessly amusing. While, true, it had been modified by the Doctor at some point, thus making it far from an ordinary phone, that hardly gave it the gravitas Winston liked to ascribe to it.

"Yes, well, I'm hardly about to tell you any state secrets. At least partially because I don't actually know any."

" _Ah, but you would if you took me up on my offer and came to work for me. The war effort could certainly use someone of your and your husband's caliber, not to mention experience."_

Amy snorted. "My experience is extensive and varied, but hardly covers running a war."

" _Still, you're a bright young woman, you could learn. In fact there's another young woman working for one of our joint operations with the United States. A steady, determined young lady, I think you and she would get along famously. Currently, her operation is also working alongside Captain America and his men."_

"Believe it or not I have actually met the man."

The man on the other end laughed. _"Amelia, my dear, if you told me you'd met Jesus of Nazareth himself, I would believe you."_

"Well I certainly can't claim _that_ honour. Just like I can't claim the honour of taking that position of yours. You know as well as I do that Rory and I can't put ourselves into a position where we could influence history."

" _A shame, really. Oh, I finally finished reading your latest book the other day. A fascinating read, thoroughly enjoyable."_

"I'm surprised you managed to find the time to do that in between the war."

" _Well, one must find a little bit of time to relax every now and then. Besides, I confess to being giddy as a schoolboy at the prospect of reading about a new adventure from you. And this one certainly didn't disappoint. Lizard people hibernating in giant cities deep beneath the Earth? An interesting idea indeed. One could almost wonder at the ease with which you come up with these things."_

Amy smirked. "As we've already discussed, Winston, my experiences are quite varied."

" _Indeed, indeed. Now, if you weren't planning on taking me up on my offer, why was it you needed to speak with me?"_

The humour instantly disappeared from her demeanor. She hadn't expected him to get back to her so quickly. "I just wanted to, well, warn you I suppose. I haven't actually spoken to Rory about this, mind you, so nothing's decided yet, but, well, you could say that something's come up and it's presenting us with a rather unique opportunity." She took a deep breath in an effort to calm her suddenly racing heart. "Just... don't be surprised if the next time you call, we're no longer here."

There was a long pause on the other end of the telephone. _"I see. I take it this opportunity doesn't have anything to do with a mutual acquaintance of ours?"_

"No. Which is why it's unique and not likely to come again. And..." She bit her lip as she contemplated whether or not to continue.

A creak of wood had her looking up to see Rory standing at the bottom of the stairs. She met his eyes.

"And something disastrous is about to happen. I don't know exactly what it is yet, but if it isn't stopped, it could rip the world, and possibly the universe, apart."

For several, long moments, her words hung suspended in the air between the three of them.

" _Then you must do what you must, Amelia. I shall miss you and our little chats profusely, however we must all do our part in making sure the future is a safe place for our children, and our children's children, and so on."_

"Yes, of course," said Amy, her eyes still locked with Rory's. "Good-bye, Winston. And good luck."

" _To you and your family as well, Amelia. Safe travels."_

With a heavy heart, Amy hung up the phone.

"So, I suppose this is the part where we need to talk," said Rory mildly, stoic in a way that made Amy smile. This was her husband. Her rock. The man she'd fallen in love with, the man who'd taken on an alliance of some of the most powerful religious orders in the universe in order to rescue her and their child. Even if he'd only been half-successful.

Amy smiled at him. "Yes, it is."

"Upstairs?"

Amy nodded and went over to take his out-stretched hand.


	5. Part Four

Tony heard the door open and instinctively tensed, relaxing at the quiet, slightly uneven footsteps that followed. He turned to face the newcomer, not really surprised to find Natasha limping towards him, her right cheek scratched and bruised, her left arm in a sling and her right hand carrying a cup of steaming coffee.

"You know I'm hardly an expert in soft, squishy human biology, but shouldn't you be in bed?" he asked her.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Shouldn't you?" she countered.

Tony shrugged, wincing as the movement made his ribs twinge and pulled at the bruises on his back. "Point." He gestured towards the cup. "That for me?"

"Maybe," Natasha said with a sly smile. Then she handed him the coffee cup without another word. "How's it coming with the suit?"

Tony sighed. "I still can't figure out how Kang disabled it. Whatever that beam was, it wasn't an EMP. Almost looks like it overloaded the circuits, causing a lot of the panels to burn out. I'm just not quite sure how it did that without affecting the arc reactor at all."

"Can you fix it?"

"If I was in my workshop, I'd say yes." He gestured to the space around them. "Here, in my father's old workshop that hasn't been updated since the 70s? I can _try_."

Natasha nodded. "Is this the only suit that survived?" she asked quietly.

"No," Tony answered almost immediately. "I've been keeping a few suits in Malibu for emergencies. They're not the newest models, but they're better than nothing. Friday's already sent them, but they're taking three separate routes and traveling as far under the radar as they can so it'll take them longer to get here than usual."

"Apparently we have three days."

"They'll be here by tomorrow afternoon."

"Good."

Tony turned back to stare at his suit, laying inert on his father's old, solid oak workbench. It didn't matter that Stark Mansion belonged to him now, he hadn't lived in it since his parents died, preferring penthouse suites in Midtown and his house in Malibu. And then Stark Tower. He hadn't left it completely derelict, of course; there was a cleaning staff who came by once a week to make sure it remained habitable. He'd simply never felt the desire to actually inhabit it.

Standing in what was once – and, really, still was in all the ways that mattered – his father's workshop felt wrong. The iron man suit looked grotesquely out-of-place and Tony himself couldn't shake the feeling that he was intruding into someone else's space. This had been a room full of wonder, but also resentment, because his father had often spent more time in this room than he had with his son.

"Don't suppose anyone's heard from our UN liaison?" Tony asked, surprising himself with the amount of bitterness in his voice.

"No, but it's not like they'd necessarily know where to find us."

"Right. Shit, now I wish I hadn't kept the phone from Steve in my desk."

"Where else could you have kept it?"

"I don't know... Like a safety deposit box or something? Or maybe an anonymous locker at the subway station. Isn't that what people do in the movies?"

Natasha snorted. "That would be even more awkward to get to in a crisis. Besides, it's not like you could get a call through Kang's jamming signal anyway."

Tony sighed. "I'd figure something out."

A quick knock was the only warning they had before Vision came sailing through the thick lead-lined workshop door. He was frowning at both of them.

"I was under the impression that both of you should be resting," he said, his tone mild but laced with clear disapproval.

Tony waved off his concern. "I wanted to see if the suit could be salvaged. I'm kinda surprised _you're_ back so soon."

Vision cocked his head. "It's twelve past two in the morning."

"Really?" Tony blinked. "Oh. Uh, I take it you sent Spiderman home?"

He nodded. "I sent him home around midnight."

"Good, good. The safest place for him right now is at his aunt's, far away from us."

"You realize we have no idea who Kang actually considers the Avengers?" Natasha pointed out.

Tony sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He'd already considered the problem. "I know. He said he's studied history..."

"But he didn't say how much detail he went into. We also don't know if something happened in the future that caused the history books to be altered."

"Exactly. Officially, Spiderman isn't an Avenger because he's too young, but he probably will become one once he's old enough which Kang might know about. Does that mean he considers him an Avenger now? Does he consider Cap an Avenger even though he's currently gone rogue and not on the official roster...?"

"You are speaking as though you are considering giving into Kang's demands," said Vision.

"We're not," said Natasha, her eyes sharp despite being slightly unfocused from painkillers. "But we might need to pretend to be."

Vision nodded. "Ah, I see."

"Speaking of which, I don't suppose you happened to find out if Dum-E and Butterfingers survived?" Tony asked.

"No, I'm sorry, I was more concerned with finding people trapped in the rubble," he gently reminded Tony.

Tony winced, because, yeah of course that was more important. With the other Avengers too badly injured to help, he and Spiderman had probably had their hands full enough. If worse came to worse, he could always rebuild them, but it wouldn't quite be the same...

"I did, however, managed to find Captain Rogers' shield," Vision continued. "I left it upstairs in the study." He paused. "The one in the east wing."

Tony shook himself out of his maudlin thoughts – he'd deal with it later. Assuming there was a later. "Oh. I guess it survived alright?"

"It sustained a few minor scratches."

He chuckled dryly. "Gotta love that vibranium."

"Indeed. And now I believe I must insist that both of you go to bed."

Tony sighed. "Yeah, yeah. I can't really do anything with the suit until my backups arrive so I can run proper diagnostics."

To Tony's amusement, Vision insisted on escorting them both to their rooms. Had he been awake for it, he would've been even more amused that he was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

* * *

Tony surged awake with a startled yell. Which then turned into yelp of pain as his ribs vehemently protested the sudden movement. On the nightstand beside the bed, his cellphone continued to blare out AC/DC at the top of its little speaker lungs.

One hand holding his bruised – and possibly cracked – ribs, he reached out with his other to pick up the phone.

"Hello," he croaked into the phone, his throat dry and his head still sleep-fuzzy.

" _Sir, manor security sensors have detected intruders on the property."_

Tony blinked, wondering why FRIDAY was calling him on his phone to tell him about a security breech, when his eyes finally registered his surroundings. The previous day's events came back to him seconds later. He turned on the speakerphone and placed it back on the nightstand.

"I see you got a signal working," he said, throwing his covers aside and getting out of bed as quickly as his ribs would allow.

" _Unfortunately not, sir. This is a local network I've created using the signal from the Iron Man suit to boost the connection. I'm afraid its limits are the manor security system and the Starkphones used by the other Avengers."_

Tony winced and hissed his way into his underarmour. While it wasn't entirely bullet-proof, it would definitely be better than his bathrobe for protection. Once he'd finally gotten it on, he had to pause to catch his breath.

"So you've let the others know about the intruders?" he asked as he slipped his repulsor gloves on.

" _Yes, sir."_

"Good."

He grabbed the phone as he hurried out the door. Natasha was waiting for him at the end of the hallway, looking like she was ready to jump into battle. Her sling was noticeably missing, but Tony decided not to mention it.

"Any more information about our intruders?" she asked.

He shook his head as they hurried down the stairs together. "The manor's security systems are pretty rudimentary and the only CCTV cameras are by the entrances. Unfortunately, their feed is sent externally to the company that's supposed to be maintaining the system. I could hack it, of course, but I'd need a better computer than the Commodore 67 that's probably still sitting in dad's old study."

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. "You never upgraded the security system here?"

He shrugged, and then winced at the extra twinge from his already-throbbing ribs. "For years I didn't want to come anywhere near here and then... well, all the important stuff was elsewhere and I seriously didn't give a shit if someone broke in to steal a vase or something."

They found Rhodey carefully crouched beside one of the side-windows in the ballroom that over-looked the back garden in his new modified suit-harness.

Tony refused to call it a half-suit, although that was essentially what it looked like. The legs had full boots, though only limited hovering capabilities, but the rest of the legs were a slightly more heavy-duty version of his original leg braces. The upper body was more of a harness, but still made of metal with small, short-range missiles built into the shoulder pads and matching gauntlets. There were also a couple of built-in gun holsters.

It was designed to be an option for combat that gave him a better, more stable range of motion than just the leg braces on their own. Rhodey's movements were still slightly stilted in it, but he was slowly getting better. Tony was also – in the spare time he didn't really have – designing a suit that could fit around this suit-harness to make it easier for Rhodey to transition into War Machine.

"Vision's gone to check out the situation from the roof," Rhodey told them quietly when they reached him.

Tony nodded. "Do you see anyone out there?" he asked as Natasha took a position by one of the windows on the other side of the room.

Rhodey paused. "I saw movement in the shadows, mostly by those bushes over on the left. There's definitely more than one person out there, but whoever they are, they're good. I barely caught a glimpse of anything, and definitely not enough to identify them."

"Damn," said Tony. "Now I'm really wishing I hadn't just forgotten about this place for years. Should've assumed I'd need it eventually."

"Maybe," said Rhodey, his gaze never straying from the gap between the window frame and the curtain. "But this really isn't the time for 'should haves'."

"Uh, right. I'll go check out the front windows."

A quick glance and a few mental calculations of angles told him where the lines of sight into the room were and then Tony was hurrying across the ballroom.

He reached the grand front hall and, first of all, did a quick scan of the door and windows. Everything was still closed tight. There were two small windows beside the main doors, however Tony knew from experience that due to the trees and decorative bushes by the entrance, the view from them was limited to the main gates, the driveway and the front steps themselves. So Tony ignored those windows and carefully slipped into the drawing room to the left of the entrance. When the drapes were open, the large window in this room gave it plenty of sunlight and a lovely view of the grounds, which had once made it a perfect place for his mother to entertain guests.

Tony squashed down those memories with a stubborn determination as he flattened himself to the wall and carefully eased the heavy brocade drapes a mere inch away from the window, just enough for him to look out onto the grounds.

And then the shrill sounds of the rusted doorbell rang through the hall.

He jumped at the sound and then froze. When the doorbell rang again, he leapt into action, quickly trying different angles to see if he could spot whoever was at the door. Cursing those damned trees bordering the main doors, he quickly concluded it wasn't possible from this room. In hindsight, this was a horrible tactical oversight from the man who'd been one of the founders of SHIELD.

Natasha was already peeking through one of the windows by the main doors, her gun drawn. She glanced his way when he came in.

"So, these are either incredibly polite intruders, or else this is a trap," said Tony in a loud whisper.

"Or a diversion," Natasha added. "Whoever they are, they're standing right in front of the door. I can see part of their profiles, but not enough to tell who they are." This time she shot him a pointed, disapproving look. "Strategically, this is a horribly designed house front."

"Blame dad," said Tony as took his position at the other window. In front of which stood an evergreen that had never taken up quite this much space before. "Okay, and maybe you can blame me a little too. Clearly I hadn't anticipated ever needing to use this house for anything other than as a very expensive memento."

Giving up with an irritated growl, Tony walked over to Natasha's window, about to suggest they just go ahead and open the damned doors. He'd barely opened his mouth to speak, when Natasha suddenly froze.

"Those idiots," she growled. She then switched gun hands and stalked over to the door, unlocking it and throwing it open without saying another word. "I should just shoot both of you right now."

"Well, gee, it's good to see you too, Nat," said a familiar voice.

Tony gaped for a moment, and then stalked over to the door and pulled it open wider. Sure enough, there was a grinning Hawkeye standing on the other side, along with Golden Boy, Steve Rogers himself.

"If my ribs weren't killing me, I'd punch you both," he told them.

Rogers raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh, so you don't want our help with this little time traveler problem you have here," he asked mildly.

Tony grit his teeth. Of course they needed their help and Rogers knew it. "Do I even want to know how you found us?"

"We called Pepper from the plane," Hawkeye answered with a shrug. "Asked her where was the mostly likely place you'd hole up if Stark Tower and the Avengers complex were out of the question. Steve here seemed to remember your dad mentioning something about owning a manor at the outskirts of the city, but didn't know where it was and if you still owned it."

"You talked to Pepper? She... is she alright?"

Roger's expression softened for a moment. "Pepper's fine, Tony. She's frantic with worry for news of how you and the city are doing. As are a lot of people. So far, New York's the only city that's been attacked, but there's one small ship hovering above Washington, one above Moscow, and another two above London."

Tony breathed a sigh of relief.

"So, are you going to let us in or are we just going to stand here until one of Kang's minions floats by and spots us?" Hawkeye drawled, but his eyes were scanning the skies.

"Floats by?" Tony asked with a frown.

Rogers cleared his throat and Tony rolled his eyes. "Yes, fine, we can continue this inside. I take it the rest of the intruders in the back are yours too?"

Rogers nodded and then gestured to Hawkeye, who took a step back and put his hands together in front of his mouth. Tony was incredibly tempted to burst into laughter at the bird call that then rang across the grounds.

Stepping back to let them inside, he saw Vision coming down the main staircase, just ahead of Sam Wilson.

"Oh, look, I guess we're all here, are we?" said Tony with false cheer.

"All except Antman," said Rogers. "He went to meet someone."

Tony blinked. "He went to meet someone? What, he's got some underground criminal contacts who can help with a time-traveling megalomaniac?"

"Before we get into details, I believe you are all in need of medical attention," said Black Panther as he walked out of the ballroom with Rhodey. He gestured to a half dozen uniformed soldiers behind him. "I insist you allow my medical team to look at your injuries."

"King T'Challa," Natasha greeted him. "It's good to see you again."

T'Challa reached up and took off his face mask. He smiled at Natasha, greeting her with a polite nod. "And you, Ms Romanoff. It is less good to see your arm out of a cast."

Tony glared at Rhodey. "You tattled about our injuries to the people who infiltrated our current base."

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "Tony, I love you, but right now the last thing we have time for is petty disputes. There's a madman who claims he's from the future hovering above the city in his weirdly phallic-shaped ship and threatening to blow up major cities if he doesn't get his way. Let's just focus on stopping him. And part of that means making sure you and Nat get the medical attention you need."

"Hey, that burn on your hip isn't exactly a scratch!" Tony protested.

He got a pointed look in return. "Yes, because _I'm_ the one who likes to hide injuries and avoid medical attention."

T'Challa cleared his throat. "Is there, perhaps a room where my medics can set up?" he asked politely, though with a very hard edge.

Tony threw his arms up – and then winced at the motion. "Fine, yes, you can set up in one of the servant's quarters. It's got a small on-suite bathroom."

"Servant's quarters?" he heard Rogers ask incredulously as he led the way for T'Challa's medics.

* * *

Spiderman arrived at Stark Manor at sometime around mid-morning. They were standing around the large dining room table eating what could best be described as combat rations (thankfully brought in by Steve's group and not from Howard Stark's nuclear bunker in the basement) and discussing possible plans for dealing with Kang, when suddenly there was a tap on the window behind Clint.

The archer, who'd only been half-listening to Tony and Steve debating (ie arguing) about the recklessness of doing something or other, was in the perfect position to hear the faint tapping. Beside him, he saw T'Challa also look in the window's direction. Clint met his eyes and then shrugged before getting up and throwing the curtains open.

The huge black eyes of an upside down Spiderman stared back at him.

"Hey, I guess school's out today," said Clint as he unlatched the window to let the webslinger in.

"Ha ha," said Spiderman as he crawled in through the open window. "First of all, it's August and second of all, aren't you, like, the enemy?"

Clint snorted as he closed the window after him and drew the curtains shut again. "I'm pretty sure the enemy's the asshole floating above the city in the flying space dildo."

"Wouldn't it technically be a time dildo? Er, I mean timeship. Everyone keeps calling it a spaceship, but do we actually know if it can travel through space?"

"Kid, as long as we can get inside to blow it up, I seriously don't care."

"Fair enough."

"Hey, Underoos, glad you could make it!" said Tony, having apparently finally noticed something other than Steve. "I would've called, but even my cellphone signal's still down."

"Uh, thanks, Mister Stark," said Spiderman as he looked around the table for an empty seat. "I would've been here sooner, but my aunt didn't want me to leave. Wasn't until I told her I was going to volunteer to help at the shelters they've set up for the people displaced by the explosions before she'd let me leave the apartment."

"Aaand that's way more information than you really should be giving in a room full of people you consider your maybe-enemy," Clint pointed out with amusement.

Spiderman froze half-way into sitting down in a seat next to Rhodey. "Uh..." he said.

"Lay off the kid, Hawkeye," Sam called to him from his seat further up the table beside Cap. "It's not like any of us would wanna hurt him or his family even if we weren't being forced to band together right now."

Clint shrugged, moving to the side to allow one of T'Challa's men to lean in to speak to his king. "Hey, it's never too early to instill someone in our business with a healthy sense of paranoia."

He saw Steve shake his head, his lips twitching with amusement. Then he nodded to Spiderman. "We're glad you could make it, son," he said. "Making it here without getting spotted by those floaters is a pretty impressive feat."

"Floaters?" Spiderman asked. "Oh, you mean Kang's minions? The ones zipping around above the city in their weird chair platforms? Which are covered by some pretty kick-ass shielding, by the way. You know, in case you were wondering. And didn't already know. A biker gang in Harlem found that out the hard way apparently. Uh, anyway, I was actually calling them chair gliders, but I like floaters better. It's shorter, snappier."

"I believe we have a new problem," T'Challa suddenly spoke up. He instantly had everyone's attention. "My men have informed me that several news vans have just pulled up to the manor's gates."

"What?!" Tony exclaimed. "Are they fucking suicidal?!"

"We have to get rid of them before they give our position away to Kang's people," said Nat.

Clint nodded in agreement. "What she said."

"Dammit, we do not have time for this!" said Tony as he began marching towards the door, grabbing the suit jacket and putting it on as quickly as he could.

"Tony, are you sure you should go out when you're injured?" Steve called after him.

Tony whirled around on him. "Look, Cap, I'm not exactly asking for your permission here!" he growled at Steve. "But the fact of the matter is that I'm the _only_ one who can go out there. This is my old family home, therefore the logical place for me to go with the Tower destroyed. If any of the Avengers go out there, then it'll only tell Kang that I'm not alone. If any of _your_ team goes out there then it'll tell him you're in town. We still don't know who exactly he considers a part of the Avengers, so let's not give him any ideas."

Steve pursed his lips in disapproval, but remained silent until Tony left the room. Then he turned to address the rest of the table. "We should all take positions by the windows and doors in case he needs backup. If those TV vans were followed then we might not have much time to mobilize. Sam, you, Clint and Vision spread out across the rooftop, but keep out of sight until we're sure you'll be needed."

As Clint followed Vision and Sam out of the room, he overheard Natasha tell Steve that Tony had left something for him in the library.

Steve made sure to make some noise as he walked up behind T'Challa, who was watching the front lawn from one of the main hall's windows. He was wearing his full Black Panther suit, his sharp vibranium claws glistening in the small amount of sunlight the partially-drawn curtains were letting in.

"This manor was not designed with security in mind," said T'Challa.

"Uh, no it probably wasn't," Steve agreed as he looked over the other man's shoulder. "I think Howard had it built before the war."

"Hm." Black Panther shifted slightly so that he could look up at Steve without taking his eyes off of Tony, who had finally reached the reporters and their news vans. "I see Stark has returned your shield to you."

Steve gripped the familiar leather handle tightly, relishing the weight of the shield in his hand. He'd missed it. However, if telling him to leave it behind had been a last-ditch attempt on Tony's part to get him to reconsider, then he'd misjudged Steve horribly. Steve had never gone out to be a hero; Captain America was a mantle he'd been given, not one he'd sought out. Being Captain America gave him the opportunity he'd wanted to join the fight, to do good, and so he'd embraced the title he'd been given.

Leaving the shield behind had been the easiest thing he'd ever done. And the most difficult.

"Not quite," Steve answered. "He didn't exactly hide it away, but Natasha was the one who showed me where it was and told me to take it."

T'Challa nodded. "She is a practical woman."

Steve nodded, his eyes following Tony's movements as he talked to the reporters at the gates. He wished he could hear what was being said, but even from here he could tell that Tony clearly wasn't happy and the reporters weren't getting the hint.

Then movement from above caught his attention. "Damn," he said under his breath. He half-turned and hollered into the rest of the house. "We've got incoming!"

"I see them!" Rhodey hollered back.

"I don't think Tony's seen them yet," said Natasha as she hurried into the main hall, drawing her gun as she walked. "I'll go get him."

"No," said Steve. "Nat, you're injured and at this point, we've already been made."

"But Kang still doesn't know that you're here," she protested.

"We also don't know that he knows we're not supposed to be. Look, you're a better shot than I am and we're going to need someone who can shoot those guys and their floating chairs down from the sky more than we need someone who can shield their blasts."

Natasha glared at him for a moment and then sighed. "Fine, but I'm grabbing one of those high-caliber rifles you brought with you."

"Help yourself," said T'Challa. He then said a few words in Wakandan to his soldiers (technically, they were his bodyguards, but no one actually thought the Black Panther needed guarding). "Come, Captain, our enemy is closing in quickly."

"I'm on your six," said Steve and together they raced out the door and up the driveway towards the main gates.

The reporters had obviously seen them approaching, because Tony was already facing them when they reached them.

"What the hell, Rogers?!" he demanded, his eyes furious. "I told you I could handle it!"

"Not the time, Tony," Steve said as he gestured above them. "We've got company." Then he turned to give the reporters a stern look. "Unless you guys wanna get caught in the crossfire, I suggest you get the hell outta here."

He didn't stay to find out if they listened to him. He and the Black Panther flanked Tony as they hurried back towards the manor.

They weren't quite fast enough.

The battle than then ensued was less a battle and more a game of duck and cover, except without any proper cover. Or perhaps more like whack-a-mole with lasers – and they were the moles.

Luckily, vibranium deflected these futuristic lasers just as well it had deflected every single laser Steve had encountered in the twentieth or twenty-first century. Once they figured this out, the Black Panter veered off away from Steve and Tony in order to draw away some of the fire, but that still left Steve protecting Tony, whose underarmor wasn't quite so laser resistant.

It felt like they weren't making any progress getting back to the manor. They'd gotten as far as the half-way point, when a stream of laser fire sent them stumbling backwards a few steps. Steve brought his shield up and deflected a few blasts before grabbing Tony and dragging him to the right. Maybe they could make it to the garden and then hide in the shadows of the bushes as they headed for the nearest window.

That plan was shot up along with the garden.

Steve grit his teeth and tried to come up with a different plan. Sending Tony ahead and taking fire on his own wouldn't work, because there were too many of them. Steve counted at least two dozen on this side of the manor and he was too busy trying to protect both himself and Tony from the laser blasts to tell whether or not their weapons were working at all against the floaters.

"How long until your suits get here?" Steve asked Tony between clenched teeth as he held his shield up against a concentrated barrage of fire.

"According to their estimated time of arrival, about five hours and twenty-one minutes," Tony answered as he quickly slipped on his replusor gloves. Steve saw him brace himself and take a deep breath before popping up from behind Steve and firing several repulsor blasts at the floaters.

That's how they confirmed that Spiderman had been right and the floating chair platforms had _very_ sophisticated shielding indeed.

"Goddammit, I hate these guys," Tony said as crouched back down behind Steve and the shield. "I really, really hate them!"

And then the laserfire suddenly stopped.

Steve slowly lowered his shield enough to look over. The floaters were still hovering above them, but they'd made a visible path in the air and there was an even larger, more throne-like chair floating towards them. Though they could barely make out his face from the ground, the voice they heard was clear and strong. And bone-chillingly familiar.

"Greetings, Avengers! Having read about you extensively, I decided that perhaps another demonstration of my superior strength was in order. In case you were harbouring some residual thoughts about foolishly resisting me and my thirty-first century technology."

"You know, you really shouldn't believe everything you read," said Tony out loud.

Kang chuckled and his chair hovered in a bit closer. "How very true, Tony Stark. I'm surprised to see you without your fabled suit."

"It's at the cleaners."

"I'm sure it is. Ah, and Captain America, how fortuitous to also find you here."

Steve grit his teeth, refusing to answer Kang's taunt.

"You see, shortly after arriving in this century, my ship's sensors began to detect a rather malignant time anomaly. After some research of my own, I have come to the conclusion that you, Captain Rogers, the man out of time, are that anomaly."

"Uh, I'm pretty sure the only time anomaly here is you, Kang," Tony once again interrupted.

"You, Mister Stark, are becoming quite tiresome," said Kang just before taking out a blaster gun and firing it directly at Tony.

"Tony!" Steve cried out in alarm as Tony was lifted off his feet by the blast and thrown backwards several yards. He barely managed to cry out in pain.

Steve turned back to Kang, furious. "Even if you manage to kill us, Kang, someone else will rise up to fight you. You'll never win."

"Oh, but that's where you're wrong, Captain America. However, what will or will not happen is really no longer your concern."

Kang pressed a button on his console and suddenly, Steve was bathed in light. It was a heavy light, one that pushed and pulled him downwards both at the same time. He braced his muscles against it, but it was no use. He fell to his knees, and then forward onto his hands, until finally he keeled over onto to side panting, barely able to lift a finger against the force weighing him down.

He managed to open his eyes just enough to see a device being lowered to the ground mere feet in front of him, little lights lit up all over its front. He felt the light holding him down waver slightly, but it wasn't enough for him to move, nor could find the strength to turn his head to find out what was causing it to fluctuate.

All he could do was hope his team figured something out. And pray they made it out alive.

That hope was strengthened when he saw Tony crawling towards the device.

And then the light bathing Steve was gone. At first, he couldn't do anything but blink in surprise, but he quickly found his strength again and was on his feet, running towards Tony and the device. Above him he saw Sam and Redwing tag-teaming Kang in the sky, along with War Machine, who was firing repulsor blast after repulsor blast.

"Tony, can you turn it off?" he demanded when he reached the device.

"If I had days to figure out the tech, sure," Tony replied, making a small sound of triumph when he managed figure out how to open the casing.

"Then step back," said Steve.

Tony's head snapped up at him. "Wha–" he began. Then his eyes widened and he back-pedaled.

Steve brought his shield down onto the device with all his might. The clang from the impact was nearly deafening and it left quite an impressive dent. But the device didn't turn off.

"Shit, what is this thing made out of?" asked Tony. He went up to the device again, waving Steve off. "That's clearly not going to work, so let me at it."

"Tony."

"Look, maybe if I pull enough wires, it'll turn off."

Steve supposed it was as good a plan as any.

Sparks flew from the device and Tony pulled his hand away with a hiss. "Damn, okay, I'm not quite sure what that did, but I don't think it did the right thing. Look, Cap, stand back you're in my light."

Steve stood back, but balanced on his toes, keeping one eye on Tony in case he needed to pull him away, and the other eye on the sky so that he could once again shield them both from any stray lasers. Kang was now free of Sam's dual assault, but was still concentrating his efforts on chasing Rhodey around. Though the chair he was sitting in was leagues more advanced than the War Machine suit, it didn't outmaneuver it.

"Shit, Cap, I don't think I can–" was the last thing Steve heard Tony say before a bright light enveloped them both, knocking them unconscious and sending them to an unremarkable alley in Brooklyn.


	6. Part Five

Steve carefully eased the door to the workshop open. One glance at Tony, however, told him it would take a lot more than a creaky door to disrupt his concentration. As had become the usual over the past week, Tony was sitting on a simple wooden stool and hunched intently over the device as he fiddled with its innards.

His twelve-year-old blond shadow was crouched on top of a steel cabinet from where he could clearly see over his shoulder. Timothy looked up when Steve entered and waved at him with a grin. Steve smiled and nodded to the boy in greeting. Amy's son had barely left Tony's side this past week, except for when he was glued to the radio listening to the afternoon news, or out collecting scrap metal with his friends.

To everyone's complete surprise, Tony didn't really seem to mind. Steve even caught him explaining microcircuits to Timothy once. How much the boy actually understood was another question, but he'd been following every one of Tony's words with rapt fascination.

The week had been an unexpected delight. Steve had spent hours just wandering around New York City. Brooklyn was exactly as he remembered it. He even recognized some of his old neighbours, old classmates, people he used to run into at the grocery store. He hadn't spoken to any of them, of course, but it was amazing to just look over and spot them in a crowd. It wasn't like he had any idea what to say to them anyway.

After years of yearning after his past, after the world he'd once left behind, it was heartbreaking to realize he no longer belonged here either.

Steve placed a glass of water and a sandwich on the workbench with a loud clink. In front of the device, Tony froze and then pulled away slowly. He looked over at the sandwich and blinked.

"Is it lunchtime already?" he asked.

"Actually, it's nearly three o'clock," Steve pointed out.

"Oh. Huh, I guess I am kinda hungry." Tony picked up the sandwich and took a large bite.

"So, how's it coming?" Steve asked.

"Uh, I think I've got it mostly fixed," Tony replied in-between bites. "I'll have to run some tests first to make sure the individual components don't blow up when I turn it on."

"Will you be able to do that without your usual lab equipment?"

Tony made a face. "I can try. I mean, obviously, I'll have to test the device completely to make sure it can create a stable field... But the real problem is that I'm not entirely sure of the physics _behind_ the field. As much as I hate to say it, this tech is a bit beyond current scientific theory, so at the end of the day, we'll kinda just have to hope and pray I don't fling us into the Jurassic era or something."

Steve smirked. "That wouldn't be too bad," he said. "We could learn to ride dinosaurs."

Timothy burst into laughter. Tony jumped and then looked back at the boy before meeting Steve's eyes with wide horrified eyes of his own.

"Shit, I forgot he was there," Steve heard him mutter under his breath.

"You finished mom's books!" Timothy exclaimed with delight and jumped down from the cabinet.

"Your mom writes books?" Tony asked.

Steve grinned. "Yup, she writes pulp fiction novels under the pen name A. R. Song. All about the adventures of the intrepid explorer and scientist Doctor William Pond and his daughter Melody, whose a crack-shot and an archaeologist."

"William Pond? That's an oddly normal name for an intrepid explorer."

"It's mom's name plus dad's name," Timothy pipped up. "Before she married dad, mom's last name was Pond!" Suddenly, Timothy became somber. "And Melody was the name of the daughter they were going to have only there was an accident and they lost her and now mom can't have kids anymore. That's why they adopted us."

Steve nodded, suddenly seeing the books he'd been reading in a whole new light. It also answered the question of whether or not the kids were adopted.

"So, they what, decided to just get three kids while they were at it?" Tony asked incredulously. "Did they get, like, a discount or something? Adopt two, get one free?"

Timothy cocked his head at Tony's odd phrasing. "Nah, mom originally wanted to just adopt Ben, 'cause she said he reminded her of dad when he was his age, only Ben and me were best pals, so Ben asked them to adopt me too. He said we were already kinda like brothers and that he'd really, really miss me if they left me behind." Timothy grinned happily at the reminder. "Mom and dad just sort of looked at each other and said 'sure, why not'."

"And they adopted Bethany later?" Steve asked.

"Nah, mom said she needed to even things out and then she asked Beth if she wanted to come help her keep us all in line. Boy was everyone at the orphanage surprised about that too! Beth was always gettin' into trouble, all 'cause she liked to climb the trees in the back and look for frogs with us boys. She was pretty good at catching 'em too, for a girl. But the nuns didn't really like that much. I remember Sister Eve once telling her she'd never get adopted by a family if she didn't act more lady-like."

Steve chuckled. "I take it your mom didn't care that she wasn't lady-like."

Timothy grinned. "Nope! She said someone who's afraid to get dirty isn't really much use in the real world," he recited. "And that it's more important to be a good person and be kind to other people than it is to be clean and polished."

"Your mom's a smart lady," Tony commented.

"That's what dad says!"

"He never really struck me as an idiot."

"No, but some people say he should be going to war like the other men," said Timothy with a frown.

Steve winced. He could well imagine the sort of flak Rory Williams was getting for not enlisting to go off to war. And part of Steve wondered why he hadn't. The other part... the other part had seen the haunted look in his eyes whenever the dinner conversation turned to the war. He'd also seen the looks shared by husband and wife when they thought no one was looking (or, more likely, weren't aware of Captain America's enhanced vision). They didn't look quite old enough to have fought in the First World War, but looks could be deceiving.

He didn't say any of that to Timothy. Instead he placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled sadly. "Son, the part of war that no one likes to talk about is that you take it with you when you leave the battlefield. All those fellas out there fighting, they've got it hard, but they'll have an even harder time of it when they come home. And they're going to need people just like your father to help them heal, help them feel like they're human again. I know your father's just an orderly, but he's a friendly, understanding face and to a guy who's been seeing nothing but blood and hearing nothing but gunshots and mortar fire, that one friendly face could make all the difference."

It wasn't Steve's best speech – heck it was barely a speech – but Timothy soaked his words in with wide eyes.

"Okay, enough of this emotional shit," Tony suddenly declared. "I've got tests to run. Now, shoo!"

"Can I help?" Timothy immediately asked, vibrating with excitement.

"Uh, no. Things could spark, or blow up, and it could get dangerous. Okay, so I'm pretty sure there won't be any explosions. Mostly sure, anyway. But there will almost definitely be sparks and your mom would probably beat me to death with her cast iron skillet if I accidentally set you on fire."

"Probably," Timothy said with a nod. His eye lit up. "But if something does get set on fire, then you'll need a bucket of water to put it out. I can hold the bucket!"

"Uh, okay, first of all, I'm pretty sure Cap can handle bucket duty being oh so much bigger and stronger than either of us, and second of all, you can't use water to put out an electrical fire, which is the most likely kind to happen."

"Then what do you use for an electrical fire?"

"A fire extinguisher. One that shoots out that white foamy stuff. Or possibly CO2, I'd have to check. Either way, it extinguishes fires."

"Oh, mom's got one of those in the kitchen! I'll go get it!"

The boy raced off without another word.

Steve snickered. "I think you might just be stuck with a helper."

Tony stared at the open workshop door with a pained expression on his face. "How much do you think getting hit with a cast iron skillet would hurt?"

"Having never experienced it myself, I can't give you an exact answer," said Steve with amusement. "But my guess would be 'a lot'."

Tony sighed. "Yeah."

* * *

Bethany slipped into the house, a small smile on her face as she quietly hummed to herself. Her hair was mussed by the wind and her cheeks faintly brushed with red from the brisk late summer evening breeze. The main floor was dark, but she only turned on the single lamp by the entryway. It was all she needed for light, and there was something wonderfully mysterious about the house when it was draped in shadows. Bethany knew that most people found dark shadowy places scary, but she found them exhilarating.

With a relieved sigh, she slipped off her blue dancing shoes. It had been such a fun time tonight, but boy was she tired. She was just glad she didn't have to sneak into her home the way some of the girls had to sneak back into their boarding houses.

Footsteps on the stairs made her pause. It wasn't unusual for her parents to still be awake when she got home from the dance hall, but they didn't tend to wander around in the dark. Her eyebrows rose in surprise when she saw the silhouette that finally emerged from the staircase.

"Beth, is that you?" Ben whispered.

She rolled her eyes. "Of course it's me," she whispered back, because it just felt wrong _not_ to whisper in the dark. "Aren't you usually asleep by now?"

"We've been waiting up for you. Come on, it's important!"

"Alright, I'm coming." She frowned as she grabbed her purse and turned off the lamp before following after her brother.

To Bethany's surprise, Ben led her to their parent's bedroom, where the rest of the family were waiting for her. She felt a moment of panic, wondering if she'd done anything wrong. She was positive she'd told her parents she'd be going dancing tonight at the Eagle Club... Taking a deep breath, she shook herself out of those thoughts. She hadn't done anything wrong and there was no point in thinking that way.

"Dad, I thought you had to work again tonight?" she said instead.

"I called in sick," her dad answered.

She froze remembering a lifetime ago, when her mother had sat her down and told her she was sick. Ice froze her blood and lungs. Images of her mother in a hospital bed, pale and lifeless, and then the funeral...

"W-what's wrong?" she asked in a small, insecure voice.

Her mom's eyes widened. "Nothing!" she quickly assured her. "Well, nothing like that anyway. Look, just sit down."

A quick glance around the room found an empty chair in front of her mom's vanity. She pulled it out and brought it closer to the group. Ben, it looked like, had brought in a chair from his room while Timothy was sitting cross-legged on the bed along with their parents.

Her parents exchanged a look, one of those ones they used to magically communicate things to each other. Then they both took a deep breath and looked back to them.

"Right, so Timothy found out that the device Mister Stark's been working on all week is fixed and they're likely going to be using it tomorrow to get home," her mom began.

"Home?" Ben asked. "But Captain Rogers said he was from New York."

"Yes, he is," their mom agreed. "It's... complicated. Needless to say, your father and I know a bit more about the device and their mission than we've been letting on. And most of all, we know that there's great danger to both the city and to the world. Something worse than Hitler or the Nazis. Something they're going to need our help with."

She paused.

"But we're not going without you," their father added, his voice quiet. "And we won't go at all if any of you don't want to come with us. We're a family."

"Go on an adventure with Captain America?" Timothy asked with wide, excited eyes. He exchanged looks with Ben. "Help Captain America save the day? Of course we wanna go!"

Ben smiled shyly. "It would be pretty swell to help Captain America. He's really nice. And it's, uh, our patriotic duty to do what we can to help protect the country."

Their parents exchanged amused eyerolls.

Bethany knew her eyes were wide, but she couldn't help it. The ice was long gone, but now her limbs were filled with a prickly warmth. Something worse than Hitler or Nazis? Did that mean there was an even worse war coming? She swallowed.

"If we go, will we be coming back?" she heard herself ask.

Everyone looked at her. Even Timothy went silent, looking stricken. Naturally, he hadn't thought any farther than the fun adventure.

Her mom shook her head sadly. "No, I'm afraid not. This is a one chance, one-way trip."

"Do you know where they're going?" Ben asked.

Their father winced. "More or less."

"What do you mean?" Bethany demanded. "Exactly how much more or less?!"

Their parents exchanged a look again. Their father nodded and then their mother turned back to them with a sigh. "Right, so I have a confession to make."

Bethany felt herself straighten in her seat.

"Those stories I write, and the ones I've told you around the dinner table when you were all younger?"

Bethany and her brother nodded. Of course they remembered the stories: how could they not? They were the ones who told her she should write them down and have them published.

Their mom's smile turned impish "I may not have entirely made them up, you see. I just left out the alien with the space-time machine."

Bethany gaped and waited for the punchline to come. It didn't.

* * *

Tony carefully opened the bedroom door. It was o'dark something thirty in the morning and all was still. Well, all except for them of course.

"You know, after all they've done for us, I really hate stealin' out in the middle of the night like a couple a' thieves," Steve whispered behind him.

Tony rolled his eyes. "We've gone over this," he whispered back. "They'd ask too many questions and we can't risk affecting the timeline too much. That leads to really bad things in the movies."

Steve sighed. "I know."

"Look, if it makes you feel any better I'll find the kids, or maybe their grandkids, when we get back and pay for their college tuition. Or maybe give them jobs at SI or something."

"Tony, I wasn't saying that–"

"–Shhh. I thought you were supposed to know all about stealth operations. We can't let anyone he-eaahh!"

Tony's voice rose well above a whisper as his foot suddenly slipped and slid forward. Only Steve's quick reflexes stopped him from braining himself on the lovely hardwood floor. They both froze, waiting with bated breath for the slightest sign of movement from the other bedrooms. A few moments later, they both relaxed.

Adrenaline still making his heart pound, Tony looked down to the floor at his feet. And blinked.

There was a silky robe laying across the floor.

"Uh, that definitely wasn't there when we went to bed," said Tony.

"Looks like Bethany's," Steve commented. "She was out dancing 'till pretty late. Musta been tired when she got home and didn't notice when she dropped it."

"I'm thinking she might not've been entirely sober either."

" _Tony,"_ said Steve in a disapproving voice.

"What? I'm just saying. A sober woman doesn't just drop a robe unless it's on purpose... and now I'm thinking thoughts I really shouldn't be thinking about a sixteen-year-old. She is sixteen, right?"

"I think so."

"Well, that's something not quite as illegal and morally wrong. Just mostly illegal and morally wrong. And we still need to get going."

Taking extra care with every step, he and Steve continued to creep their way through the house and into the workshop. Once there, Tony turned on the light and frowned, looking up to the ceiling as only half the space was flooded with light.

"Huh, that's weird," he said. "One of the light bulbs isn't turning on."

"Do you need both lights?" Steve asked, already looking around for possible spares.

Tony shrugged. "Not really."

The workshop was really just the second half of the basement, right next to the boiler room – although the Williams' had had a half-wall built to separate the workshop space from the rest. In the workshop, Rory had a surprisingly complete set of tools, neatly organized into a large metal cabinet with a wooden shelf standing next to it consisting of what Tony guessed passed for power tools in the 40s.

There was also a long wooden workbench, upon which Kang's time travel device now sat. Its side was still dented from Cap's shield, and there were a lot more wires and components sticking out of the smooth metal casing than originally, however Tony had made it work. He hoped. The single bare lightbulb hanging above the workbench was more than enough for him to see what he was doing.

"Okay, keep those spangly fingers crossed, Cap," he said as he approached the device with a deep breath. "Like last time, the field has a range of about three meters in diameter, so you shouldn't need to stand right next to the device..."

"But better to be safe than sorry," Steve added with a nod, slipping the shield off his back as he came closer.

"Exactly." Tony scanned the wires one, last time just to make sure nothing had come loose in the past few hours. Then he took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing."

He turned the device on. It came to life with a high-pitched hum and several small flashing lights. Behind him, he thought he heard some sort of shuffling, but his eyes were intent on the screen displays, waiting with baited breath for the moment the device either worked or he had to quickly turn it off before it blew up.

"Hey, what are you–" he heard Steve say.

Whatever Captain America had been about to say was lost in a bright flash of light and a shockwave that sent him stumbling to the ground. And then he saw and heard nothing else.


	7. Part Six

The sensation of coming to after being thrown through time was not one Tony was going to cherish. His ribs ached and he must've been thrown backwards by the wave because he could feel every single one of the bruises on his back down to the last millimetre. And his head was pounding like he'd had a very intense date with a couple bottles of tequila.

He groaned and the sound just made the herd of elephants inside his skull dance more enthusiastically.

Suddenly, there were hands around his shoulders, gently manhandling him.

"Tony, how are you feeling?" he heard Rory ask. His right eyelid was gently pried apart and a small light shone into his eye.

"Like I'm not entirely sure the night before was worth it," Tony said as he tried to wave the intrusive evil light away. It really was a shame that time travel came with a lingering hangover.

Tony froze. Then his eyes flew open as he surged up. And gasped, his arms flying to support his ribs, his eyes watering with the sudden pain.

"That wasn't particularly smart," Rory mumbled, his hand coming to support Tony's back while Tony breathed through the pain. And bitter disappointment. He'd failed.

Eventually, Tony decided he needed to face reality – especially as he could vaguely hear the conversation between Amy and Rogers getting heated. It was time to face the music and figure out how much their hosts hated them and whether or not he'd destroyed their garage.

Tony took a deep breath and looked up. And up. He blinked at the clear blue sky. Carefully, he stood and turned around in a circle. They were standing in yet another non-nondescript New York alley (apparently the device had a thing for them), but just beyond the mouth of the alley, Tony could see a parking lot with a Honda Civic parked next to a blue Smart Car and, above it, a giant billboard advertising coolers using a young blonde with a cropped white top and a cowboy hat. When he faced the back of the alley and looked up then, yup, there was the ridiculously phallic-shaped space/time/whatever ship. That meant...

"I didn't fail?" He blinked again. "Wait." He looked away from the ship and back to Rory, and then over to where Steve and Amy were locked in an angry staring match, the three kids watching them through squinted, pained eyes. "Why the hell are you guys here?! The range should've been no more than three meters!"

Steve crossed his arms and straightened himself so that he could look his most imposing when he glared accusingly down at Amy. "Oh, they're not here by accident," he told Tony. "They were in the garage and snuck into the workshop just as you were turning the device on."

Amy looked entirely unimpressed by Steve's stern disapproval. She didn't roll her eyes at him, but Tony felt like it was close. "Because you're going to need our help! Whatever is going on is worse than you realize."

Timothy suddenly gasped and then pointed up to the sky. "They have spaceships in the twenty-first century?"

Amy looked over his shoulder at him, looking amused. "No, luv, that's not twenty-first century Earth technology up there. It's most likely the enemy."

"Whoever they are, they're certainly not subtle," Rory added casually.

"The enemy are aliens?!" Bethany exclaimed, her voice a few octaves higher than usual. "I thought you said the alien was a friend!"

That did make Amy roll her eyes. "Don't be silly, there are good aliens, bad aliens, and all shades in between, just like humans." Then she turned to Tony. "But we really should be getting out of here. Travelling through the time vortex leaves behind a very distinct residual radiation, one that whoever built that device of yours can no doubt scan for."

It wasn't often someone managed to flatfoot Tony with science, but nevertheless it did occasionally happen. After shaking himself mentally, he finally found the ability to reply. "Well, yeah, that makes sense and also, yes, that ship up there comes from the future or something and belongs to a guy named Kang. But the more important question, is _how the hell do you know any of that?!_ "

Amy smirked. "That's a very long story that we don't really have time for right now. But let's just say that when I said you looked familiar it wasn't because I thought you were your father."

Now even Steve was visibly gaping. Until suddenly he wasn't anymore and the steely look was back on his face and he was looking up towards the ship.

"We've got incoming floaters," he announced.

Tony looked back and cursed as two dozen or so of them swarmed from the ship. "Well, that could be a coincidence, but I wouldn't exactly be willing to put money on it," he said.

"That's definitely a smart move," said an unfamiliar voice from the mouth of the alley.

Tony whirled around to face the newcomer.

"Who are–" Rogers began to ask, when Amy suddenly cried 'River!' and launched herself at the woman.

They embraced briefly and then pulled apart almost immediately – though Tony noticed both their eyes were slightly watery.

"Hello, Amy," said the woman with a smile. "Rory."

Rory stepped forward, his eyes had widened slightly with something akin to awe. "River," he said. "It's good to see you again." He cleared his throat. "So, I don't suppose you know how to elude those things up there."

River smirked, her eyes now dancing with mischievous delight. Her head was framed by dark blonde curls, which only enhanced the image. She looked like a daring adventurer right out of one of those pulp fiction novels Amy wrote, or maybe a sci-fi adventure movie, with her short tan leather jacket and khaki pants full of pockets and a gun slung low on each hip.

"I might have an idea or two," she said with a cocky swing of her hair. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a thin metal object, looking at it carefully as she thumbed at some sort of controls.

Beside her, Amy's eyes widened. "He gave you your own screwdriver?" she said.

Tony raised an eyebrow at the round-tipped 'screwdriver'.

"Oh, not just a screwdriver, this is _his_ screwdriver."

River then pointed the 'screwdriver' at Kang's time-travel device and the tip lit up with a soft whirling noise. The lights on the device suddenly came on and Tony jumped back.

"What the hell are you doing?!" he demanded. "Do you even have any idea how it works?"

The woman had the gall to roll her eyes at him.

"I've reversed the polarity of the internal matrix, thus destabilizing the gravity field this particular device uses in order to enter the time vortex." The lights started blinking in random sequence. "This will flood the area with temporal radiation, thus masking our individual, much weaker signatures."

Tony blinked. "Okay, maybe you do know how it works." He refused to add the 'better than me'.

"But if you flood the area with this radiation, then won't we be covered in more of it than we already are?" Rogers asked with a frown. "Wouldn't that just make us easier to track once we're clear of the field?"

Snapping his finger, Tony pointed to him. "Captain America's got a point."

"Of course he does," River answered easily. "And, yes, it would unless we run very, very fast right... about... Now!"

The light on the tip of the screwdriver abruptly turned off just as the tiny lights on Kang's device began to flash rapidly. Tony didn't get to see what else the lights did, because then River was weaving around cars as she ran across the parking lot with them right behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Steve run ahead and scoop Timothy up without breaking his own long-legged super soldier-fast stride.

Behind them, there was a bright flash of light.

Tony looked over his shoulder. The floaters were skimming the top of the building just a block away.

"I hate to say it, but the chances of them not seeing us right now is pretty damn near impossible," he said as they reached the end of the parking lot and ran into yet another alley, though this one much wider and with a receiving bay to one side.

"The question isn't so much whether they can see us now, but rather whether they'll be able to figure out where we go next," Rory answered.

"Your plan is to hide until they give up?!"

Rory shrugged. "It's not my plan and I doubt that's what River's thinking."

They turned a corner and ran past yet more receiving bays. This was clearly some sort of warehouse block. Or a series of stores. Despite knowing New York really well, Tony felt lost with no idea where he was. He didn't even have his phone on him to check GPS – assuming the signal was working now.

He looked behind him. The floaters seemed to have slowed down, but were fanning out. Standard search pattern.

They rounded another corner. And stopped. The only thing in front of them was a red brick wall.

Tony heard Rogers swear violently in French and couldn't help raising an eyebrow at him despite their desperate situation. "Language, Cap."

Steve rolled his eyes and suddenly realized that neither River, nor Amy or Rory seemed worried by the dead end. He narrowed his eyes at them. As did Tony.

"Uh, you realize we're trapped here, right?" he said.

"Not even a little bit," said River cheekily as she reached for the gun on her left hip. She then pointed its oddly large, square-shaped muzzle directly at the brick wall and squeezed the trigger. A large, square of light projected onto the brick wall and the bricks shimmered for a moment before disappearing. When River lowered the gun, there was a perfect square-shaped hole in the side of the building just large enough for two people to walk through.

River flashed a smirk at Tony over her shoulder and then stepped through the hole. Tony stood there gaping while Amy and Rory quickly herded their children through and followed themselves. Then he hurried over to inspect the hole himself. There weren't any signs of heat or blasting force. It just looked as though that segment of the building had simply disappeared. When he stepped through into the office space on the other side of the wall, it was even more obvious that that was exactly what had happened. There was half a desk on one side of the hole and part of a filing cabinet on the other with a painting hanging over both with a perfect corner taken out of it.

"That's incredible," he breathed, his mind already thinking through the steps to creating such a device.

Steve stepped through the hole. "Won't this make it obvious where we've gone?" he asked.

River simply pointed her gun at the wall again and squeezed the trigger. The beam of light enveloped the empty space and it shimmered again. Seconds later, the hole in the wall was gone and the desk, cabinet and painting were back to their original forms.

"Okay, I want one of those, whatever it is," said Tony, grinning madly as he turned to River.

"Sorry, Sweety, but there are rules about that sort of thing," she said. "And we have to get going."

She holstered the magical doorway-creating gun and walked off. Tony ran after her.

"Oh come on," he whined. "That technology is amazing. Just think of the practical applications! You could, like, disappear parts of mountains in order to extract minerals and then just put them back after."

She side-eyed him. "Interestingly enough, that's exactly what the technology was originally developed for. Of course the original equipment was much larger. It wasn't until the invention of the MSR that they were able to create a portable version. The process simply took too much energy."

"The MSR?" Tony asked, suddenly more aware than ever that he and Rogers hadn't actually been introduced to River and thus he had no idea where – or when – she was from.

River took out her screwdriver and held it up. The light came on along with the familiar whirling noise. Tony couldn't read anything from the tiny screen she was staring at. After a moment she turned left down a corridor full of doors. Opening a door at the end of the corridor, River turned on a light and began walking down a set of stairs leading, presumably to the basement.

"Isn't Kang going to know about this technology?" Steve asked from somewhere behind them.

"No, the man you know as Kang the Conqueror was born in the year 3029, but the MSR wasn't invented until the 4860s," River answered easily. "Or something like that. The history of technology was never my specialty. It was definitely before the founding of New New New New New York."

"The founding of _what now_?!" Tony exclaimed. "Lady, who the hell _are_ you?"

River winked at him. "Now that is a _very_ long story indeed."

"Are you mom's alien friend with the space and time machine?" Timothy suddenly pipped up.

River suddenly stopped mid-stride. She looked down at the kid as though she hadn't even noticed him before. "No," she finally answered a few moments later, still looking stunned. "I'm his wife. Did-did you say your _mom_?"

She looked to Amy, who had come to stand next to Tim and put a hand over his shoulder before reaching over to pull Ben next to her. Rory came to stand by his wife with Bethany.

"You have children," River said, sounding awed. "I mean, adopted obviously."

"Yes," said Amy. "These are Timothy, Ben and Beth. Children, I'd like you to meet River Song. Your older sister."

Tony would've laughed at the way all three kids' eyes widened and their jaws dropped had he not been gaping right along with them.

Bethany was the first one to remember herself. "I thought you said your daughter died," she said quietly, the accusation clear in her voice.

"I believe the words we used were 'she was taken from us'," Rory pointed out mildly. "It's just that most people assume the person who took her was God."

"There was no God of any sort involved with what happened," Amy said darkly.

"No, but there was a hero," said River with a smile. She looked down at her new-found siblings. "A great hero. One the galaxies still tell stories about. The man who faced an unholy alliance of the most powerful religious orders the universe had to offer, who faced the demons of Demon's Run in order to take back his wife and their unborn child. The Last Centurion."

Amy smiled dreamily and batted her eye lashes at her husband. "My hero," she said.

Rory rolled his eyes. "It's not like I didn't have help," he grumbled, though the tips of his ears turned pink.

"Still, you fought headless monks with lightsabers for me," she said matter-of-factly. "That definitely counts for something."

"Your future self died for me on that alien holiday resort."

"You know part of me wants to write all this down so that I can remember to ask about it later, after I've had time to properly formulate the questions, while the other part of me wants to throw up from the mushiness," said Tony. "And I'm not entirely sure which one's winning."

Amy and Rory rolled their eyes at him in perfect unison. Tony threw his hands up in disgust.

Rogers cleared his throat. "Um, as much as I really do want to hear more, shouldn't we be going?" he asked, looking like he was trying to be stern.

River Song shook herself and then smiled brightly. "You're absolutely right!" Before she turned away, she winked once more at the kids. "By the way, when this is all over, you should definitely ask your father about the time he shoved Hitler into a storage cupboard."

There was a pause.

"Oh yeah, that did happen, didn't it?" said Rory thoughtfully.

"Dad!" Timothy exclaimed. "How do you forget something like that?!"

Rory shrugged. "Well, of all the things that happened that day it really was the least memorable."

Tony just shook his head and followed behind him. Rogers jogged up beside him and met his eyes. "You know, I never thought I'd meet anyone with a stranger life than mine," he said.

"No kidding, Spangles," Tony answered him. He frowned. "I still really want that wall-disappearing gun thing."

This time, Tony was less surprised when they stopped in front of a dead end corridor. River took a few extra seconds to calibrate something on the gun and then made another entrance into the basement of the next building – although this time they had to pass through two meters of disappeared cement foundations and dirt. They travelled through basements that weren't supposed to be connected for another half an hour, with River pausing every so often to consult her screwdriver, which was apparently more of a multi-function tool than a screwdriver.

The only explanation Tony managed to get for its multi-purpose uses was that it was 'sonic'. As if that explained everything.

And, yes, he wanted one of those too.

"So, this Kang who's causing trouble," Amy said as they walked into their umpteenth basement. "Do you know anything about him?"

River winced as she sealed up the hole she'd made. "A bit, but not much," she answered and continued talking as they hurried through yet another bland, boring structure. "The timelines are currently in flux. He's made too many big changes in them. It's dangerous."

"I know," said Amy darkly. "It's why we're here."

River's eyes widened with horror. "I thought I could feel it. How much time?"

"A few days at most."

River swallowed and took a deep breath. "Right, well, there's not really too much to say about Nathaniel Richards, or Kang the Conqueror as you know him. He's from a fairly well-off family from one of the Moon Colonies. Became obsessed with Earth and finding a way to fix Earth's atmosphere in order to make the planet habitable again. By all accounts he was quite brilliant, but I honestly have no idea where he got the time travel technology. There is no evidence of him inventing it, however according to old Moon Colony records, he did suddenly disappear for three years and when he came back he told a fantastical story about having lived in Ancient Egypt as a pharaoh. Then he started gathering followers and building an army. And now he's here."

"Have you confirmed his Ancient Egypt story?" Rory asked.

"No, but it's not entirely impossible."

"Wait, so you're saying he wants to take over the planet so that he can prevent the human race from making it uninhabitable?" said Tony in an attempt to prevent his headache from getting worse. "Because I feel like someone needs to clarify that this is a thing that apparently happens and not just some doom-saying predictions from a bunch of environmental nuts."

"I'm afraid I can't clarify anything one way or another," River answered immediately. She smirked over her shoulder at him. Again. "Spoilers."

Tony threw his arms up – and then made a pained noise as his ribs screamed at him. "But you just said Kang came back in time to prevent it from happening, which means it had to have happened in order for him to want to come back in time to prevent it!"

River was silent for a few moments. "There are a lot of things that happen in the twenty-first century. I mean, obviously history is full of important events, but the ones in the twenty-first century change _everything_."

She glanced at the screwdriver and then suddenly stopped beside a heavy-looking locked door with a security keypad. She pointed the screwdriver at the security keypad. As it came to life once more, she continued: "I wouldn't worry too much about Kang's motivations if I were you. In the long run it doesn't matter how noble or not they are, because should he succeed, the results will be catastrophic."

The lock clicked open and River stepped through the door open and then proceeded down yet another short corridor and then up a flight of stairs.

It was an odd sensation, walking into a hallway full of people in business suits and lab coats. Luckily, most of them seemed to be rushing around frantically and paid them no notice, but Tony felt a few curious frowns their way and knew it was only a matter of time before someone called security. Between Steve's bright-coloured costume and the Williams' 40s wardrobe, it was obvious they didn't belong.

Sure enough, a few minutes Tony heard heavy boots approaching from down the next corridor and had just enough time to note that whatever this building was, it seemed to have fairly some heavy-duty security, when River suddenly stopped in front of a door on the left and unlocked it with her screwdriver. They hurried inside and River locked it after them.

They found themselves inside some sort of lab. The walls were painted a blinding white and the floors were polished concrete. The two lab benches in the room looked fully-equipped, the metal so new it shined in the light coming in from the no-doubt hermetically-sealed windows. The smell of fresh paint and ammonia hung in the air.

River didn't give them much time to sight-see, however, and soon they were leaving the room through another hole in the wall. This time the hole led out to a small parking lot. They ran across it and in-between two other buildings. When they reached the end of the long alley, she finally stopped. Tony looked over several shoulders ahead of him and caught a glimpse of a low-lying building with several uniformed and heavily-armed guards standing in front.

No, on second glance, those men were clearly soldiers, though decidedly _not_ US Armed Forces.

Amy, who was right behind River, gasped. "Those are UNIT soldiers!" she whispered.

"UNIT?" Rogers asked just before Tony had the chance to.

"United Nations Intelligence Task Force," said Rory. "We've worked with them before."

River turned to them with a smile. "And if you hurry, they should be able to take you to the rest of their forces." She looked up and met Tony's eyes. "By this point, the rest of the Avengers should be there as well."

Then she seemed to brace herself. "And I'm afraid this is also where I have to leave you. I really shouldn't be here at all, but I knew you'd need the hand and, well, I just couldn't shake the feeling that this was my last chance to see you."

Tony froze. He didn't like the sound of those words.

"What do you mean, you shouldn't be here?" Amy asked carefully.

River winked mischievously at her. "Well, I'm not exactly breaking the rules of time, but I am bending them a little."

"How exactly did you know we'd need help?" Rory asked as he joined the two women.

River's smile turned sly. "Spoilers," she said. Then she stepped forward and hugged them.

Amy and Rory immediately put their arms around her and each other in a tight three-way hug, clinging to each other as though they never wanted to let go. And, possibly, they didn't. Tony found himself brimming with questions about their relationship and what had happened to the three of them, but even he knew this wasn't the time for any of them.

Finally the three of them broke apart and this time Tony knew he wasn't imagining the tears glistening in their eyes.

River wiped at her eyes and then smiled brightly at her parents. "Well, I must be off now. I've got a date with a mysteriously abandoned library."

"Have fun, River," said Amy.

"And good luck," Rory added.

She smirked at both of them. "You too." She looked to the three kids standing just behind her parents. "It was good to meet you three. Take care of our parents for me, alright?"

River brought her hand up to look at the large watch Tony hadn't even noticed she was wearing and pressed a few buttons.

And then she was gone.

Tony gaped at the empty space.

"Woah!" he heard Timothy exclaim.

"Okay, forget the cool wall-disappearing gun thing," Tony finally said after a long, silent pause. "That watch is what I really want."

"Well, unless you can find a way to get to the fifty-first century, you're not getting one," said Amy. "Now come on, we've got a transport to catch."

Mentally reminding himself to revisit this entire thing later (or rather, adding it to the list of things to come back to later when there wasn't a crazy time-travelling environmental terrorist threatening the world), Tony hurried after Amy and Rory, who were already walking up to the uniformed soldiers.


	8. Part Seven

It was unbelievable how easy it had been to convince the military-looking men to give them a ride. Hell, all Amy had done was march up to them and introduce herself – though, she'd called herself Amelia Williams-Pond – and one of the soldier's eyes had widened and the next thing any of them knew, they were being loaded into the back of a truck with a milk company logo on the side.

The ride was awkward and silent, though at least most of the looks Steve was getting felt curious instead of angry.

Half an hour later, the truck finally stopped and they piled out into a small underground parking garage. There was a woman with large black plastic glasses wearing a brown leather coat and a long multi-coloured scarf waiting for them surrounded by several more United Nations soldiers. Who looked oddly familiar...

"Well, if it isn't our illusive UN liaison!" Tony declared as he climbed out of the back of the truck.

The woman smiled crookedly at him. "Hello, Mister Stark."

And then someone gasped. Steve turned to Amy. "Osgood!" she cried, looking delighted. "Does that mean you're here with Kate Stewart's team?"

The UN liaison grinned. "Amy, Rory, it's good to see both of you again," she said. "And, yes, I am. After our US headquarters were blown up by Kang, UNIT had to scramble to deploy a new team and Kate's was the most ready to hop a flight to the US. She's busy upstairs coordinating attack plans, but she's very excited to see you again."

With a bland, yet somehow still sincere, smile, Osgood then turned to Steve. "Don't worry, both of your teams are also upstairs. Everyone's of the opinion that we have more important things to concentrate on than the aftermath of the Sokovia Accords."

Steve nodded, letting his shoulders sag slightly in relief. "Are they alright?" he asked.

She hesitated. "They're all alive," she said in a tone that made Steve's throat close up.

"Who?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"Wanda Maximoff. She nearly burned herself out in order to buy everyone else enough time to escape. We managed to arrive just in time to momentarily drive off Kang's forces and extract her, but she's currently in a coma."

He clenched his fist and took a single, controlled breath. And then another.

"So, if your New York headquarters were destroyed, where is this?" he heard Rory ask and was happy for the distraction.

"One of our local, ah, contacts has been kind enough to let us use this building as a temporary headquarters."

"That was very generous of them," said Tony.

"Yes, it was," she said, her eyes lighting up with humour. "Anyway, the soldiers will finish up down here while I take you upstairs."

Four soldiers fell into step beside them, escorting them towards a service elevator. Steve automatically took them in, glanced at each of their faces so that he'd be able to recognize them later. And then he blinked and did a double-take. One of the soldiers' shifted his gaze and met his shocked eyes. He smirked at Steve before his face went blank once more and he looked straight ahead.

Steve looked over to the other side where the soldier's twin was walking beside Osgood.

"So... is this a special branch of UNIT or have you taken up cloning?" Amy asked as they stepped into the elevator.

Steve saw the moment Tony realized the nameless soldiers in the elevator with them were in fact two sets of identical twins. His double-take was hilarious.

Osgood merely shrugged. "A lot's happened since you were gone in... when were you exactly? Only the Doctor was never specific."

Rory was the one to answer. "1944," he said. "Well, technically the Weeping Angel assassin sent us to 1934 and then we lived there for ten years."

"The tale end of the depression and then World War Two? Ouch. Still, there are worse parts of history you could've ended up in, I suppose."

"Thankfully we just missed prohibition."

And that, Steve suddenly realized, was the closest any of them had come to actually admitting that Amy and Rory had come from the twenty-first century. As he watched the numbers on the elevator display continue to slowly increase, he tried to imagine what that must've been like. When he'd woken up in the twenty-first century it had been to a completely foreign world, a world that had moved on while he'd slept, progressed. Amy and Rory had done the opposite, gone to a world they'd read about in history books.

Dear God, they'd known the war was coming. Not just predicted: known.

What had that been like, waiting for the day that Hitler began his invasion of Europe? Had they been tempted to warn people about Pearl Harbor? And Timothy, the enthusiastic Captain America fan: had they been bracing themselves for the day that the radio announced his hero's death?

The elevator doors finally opened, shaking Steve out of his train of thought.

Osgood led them into a large conference room. The first thing Steve noticed was the large flatscreen television mounted on the far wall, wires coming out of it that hooked into a brown and yellow device that looked a bit like an extra large squashed football. In front of the screen was a blonde woman wearing a well-cut, but nonetheless modest-looking dark grey suit. Steve blinked as he realized it wasn't a video, but that she was in fact talking to a group of people on a three-way split-screen display.

"Oh, hey, they managed to take down the signal jammer," said Tony as he came to stand beside him. Steve could see him eyeing the device hooked up to the TV curiously.

"Uh, yeah, not quite," a familiar voice interrupted their thoughts.

Steve blinked and looked towards the voice, suddenly realizing there was a large conference table in the room, well-stocked with food and a large tray of coffee. Tony, apparently also just noticing the table, made a sound of excitement and immediately headed for the nearest coffee carafe. Steve, meanwhile, shook his head in amusement and walked over to where Scott Lang was sitting next to an unfamiliar dark-haired woman.

Scott sent him a small wave in greeting. Steve smiled in response.

"Scott, it's good to see you," said Steve. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Amy and Rory walking over to the blonde lady.

"Hey, Cap," Scott answered. "I'm pretty sure that's my line. I just wish I'd been there yesterday to help."

"It's okay, none of us were expecting Kang to attack us so quickly. Did you meet up with your contact?"

Scott jumped at the question, scrambling backwards to give Steve a better view of the woman sitting next to him. "Oh, yeah, I did," he said and then gestured to her. "Cap, this is Hope Pym. Hope, this is Steve Rogers. She's uh..."

"I'm the Wasp," she finished coolly, her sharp eyes obviously assessing him. After a moment, she stood and held her hand out to him. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Captain Rogers."

Steve reached out and shook her hand. "The pleasure is mine Ms Pym. But, please, call me Steve."

She smiled in amusement. "Steve, then."

"Wait, Hope Pym?" Tony suddenly cut in. "As in, the daughter of Hank Pym of Pym Industries?"

Hope raised an eyebrow at Tony. "Yes, that would be me. And you're Tony Stark, son of Howard Stark, the man who pissed my father off enough to make him leave SHIELD."

Tony blinked. "Pym was part of SHIELD? How did I not know that? Actually, no, you know what, nevermind. I didn't even know _my_ father was a part of SHIELD until I built the Iron Man and Fury decided it was worth his time to tell me. Anyway, more importantly, if they haven't taken down Kang's jammer, how the hell are they video conferencing?"

Scott shrugged. "Uh, as far as I can tell UNIT's using that funky signal amplifier on our end to receive the signal, but it's mostly the other guys who've got the connection going. They weren't really talking enough technicals for me to figure out exactly what they were doing, but I gather the lady, Sarah-Jane has a guy named Mister Smith who managed to calculate a frequency they could use to get a signal through and then the other three used some sort of rift or something to amplify the signal and connect it to New York. They're in, uh, Cardiff, I think."

"Mister Smith?" Tony asked. "That's all you got? Mister Smith?! That couldn't possibly sound more like a fake alias if they tried."

Scott shrugged.

"Just make sure you don't mistake him with Mickey Smith, who is one of the blokes in Cardiff," Osgood interjected brightly, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "The English one. Also not to be mistaken with John Smith, who is an entirely different person altogether and there in spirit only. And Sarah-Jane is last name Smith as well. In short, there are a lot of Smiths in that conversation."

"So... Mister Smith is Sarah-Jane's husband?" Tony tried.

"Nope, not even close." Osgood sent Tony an amused smirk and then walked off to join Amy, Rory and the blonde woman.

Steve couldn't help his growing sense of confusion. He turned back to Scott. "What in the world is going on here?!"

Hope snickered.

"Okay, so I only got there after it was all over," Scott started. "But Wanda did some sort of super-mojo and forced Kang's, uh, floaters back while Vision distracted Kang. Then these UNIT guys showed up and evaced us the hell outta there and let me tell you, they had an actual solid escape plan and everything. Anyway, from what we can tell, Kang called his goons back shortly after we got outta there and those four smaller ships flew away. A little while ago, Sarah-Jane there confirmed that two were now above London, one hovering above Washington and the fourth's in Moscow."

Tony frowned. "The cities they're not expecting to co-operate?" he asked.

Scott shrugged. "Maybe. Either way, we've got one more day to come up with a plan and so far we've got next to nothing."

Steve looked over to the screen. "Maybe we don't, but maybe we do."

He saw Tony look over to the video conference. "Hm. They did seem to think we'd need their help, like they knew something we didn't..."

"Who _are_ they?" Hope asked them, eyeing the group – and especially the three children who were watching the video conference with wide, amazed eyes. Like they'd never seen such a crisp, brightly coloured picture on a TV before.

Steve could identify with that awe.

Tony snorted. " _That_ is the million dollar question. And, _spoilers_ , but an ordinary family from the 1940s they most certainly are not."

" _WHAT?!"_

They all jumped at the loud exclamations from the television. On-screen four wide-eyed faces were staring down at Amy and Rory.

"Case in point, whatever said case or said point might be," Tony said before refilling his coffee cup and then casually walking over to where he could more easily eavesdrop on the conference.

Steve hesitated for only a moment before following.

* * *

Amy entered the conference room just behind Steve and Tony, sparing a glance for the strangers sitting at the end of the table before heading over to where Kate Stewart was conducting a video conference. Behind her, she could hear Rory telling the children to have a seat at the table and grab some food. Part of her wanted to go back and reassure them, make sure they were doing okay.

The other part of her was still reeling from her first sight of the giant ship hovering above New York, backlit by the bright white light from the crack stretching out across the sky. This was the part of her that knew time was no longer a luxury they had in abundance.

"And how long do you think it will take Mister Smith to hack the ship's systems?" Kate was saying.

The television screen was divided into two three sections. The first one showed a man in a UNIT Commander uniform, the second a group of four people who looked like they were staring down at the screen inside some sort of warehouse, and the third showed a woman not too much older than Amy herself sitting down with a backdrop of warm, peach-coloured walls, a green armchair and a bookshelf full of books and various knick-knacks.

It was the woman who replied to Kate's question: "Well, with the rift amplifying his signal, Mister Smith should be able to connect with the ships remotely, however we don't actually know anything about their systems..." She glanced to the side as she trailed off, her eyes moving as though she were reading something. Then she looked back to the camera. "Mister Smith says it shouldn't take him more than twenty-four hours, assuming Kang's men can't trace our signal and don't know about the rift."

"I doubt it," one of the men in the middle window said, his accent surprisingly American. "The Time Agency kept its existence pretty hush-hush. It's wasn't exactly top-secret, but only mid-to-high-level field agents were actively told about it. Unless Kang's lying about what time period he's from, not sure what purpose it would serve, although it would explain how he has time travel technology to begin with..."

"I thought you said he probably scavenged it," said one of the women beside him with a frown. She was dark-skinned with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was also holding a rather formidable-looking alien weapon in her hands.

The man made a face. "That's my best theory, yeah, but it's not like I can google him or consult wikipedia."

"His real name is Nathaniel Richards and he was born on one of the Moon Colonies," Amy cut in.

The American frowned. "Wait, Nataniel Richards? As in the son of Kyle and Natalie Richards?"

Amy shrugged. "Not a clue. I'm just the messenger."

"Who are Kyle and Natalie Richards?" Kate asked.

"Oh, uh, they were botanists. They specialized in agricultural preservation, came up with ways to grow nearly extinct Earth plants on other planets and even re-created strains that had been lost." He grinned. "Thanks to them, the banana was able to make a come-back. And the tomato. I mean, others later used their methods to bring back a bunch of other fruits, vegetables and grains, but those are the two I can think of that they were definitely directly responsible for. They also revolutionized deep-space hydroponics with what was then called the Rich Water Method, which is how I remember their names."

He paused. "Unfortunately, I can't really tell you anything about their son."

"Still, botany is a bit far removed from time travel," Sarah-Jane commented. Then she look to Amy. "Sorry, I didn't catch your name, but you said you're fairly certain the technology isn't his?"

Kate smiled and placed a hand on Amy's shoulder. "I apologize for the late introduction," she said. "This is Amy Williams-Pond and her husband Rory. Like most of you, they're former traveling companions of the Doctor."

Amy's head snapped to Kate and then back to the screens where the motley group was looking at them with even more curiosity than before.

"Actually, technically we're his in-laws," said Rory casually as he put his arm around her.

" _WHAT?!"_

Amy rolled her eyes at her husband while the people on and off-screen gaped at them.

"The Doctor married?!" the dark-skinned woman finally said incredulously.

"When did that happen?" added the American.

"It's a long story," said Amy.

"It always is with the Doctor," said Sarah-Jane. "I don't suppose you've got any way to contact him then?"

"Once my phone's charged again, I will," said Amy.

"Oh, you've got one of those modified phones of his too then," said the dark-skinned woman. She frowned. "Mine got destroyed by an alien blaster a few years back, but I don't ever remember it dying on me."

Amy shrugged. "I haven't had a charger for it in ten years. It's really only sentimentality that I still own it at all. It was our last tie to the twenty-first century and, well, I could never quite make myself throw it out."

She felt Rory squeeze her shoulder and she brought her hand up to squeeze his hand, smiling up at him as she did so. It hadn't been easy, getting used to living in the thirties, but they'd had each other.

"So, Kang," he gently prompted her.

Amy shook herself out of her musing. "Right, Kang," she said. "His goal is to change the future. Obviously. The problem is that while he has time travel technology, he doesn't actually _understand_ time travel. You know, the rules of what he can or cannot do. Like the reason why you shove Hitler into a storage cupboard instead of killing him."

"The twenty-first century is when everything changes," said the American, his eyes widening with dawning understanding. "By taking over the world he's casting too many ripples, disrupting too many fixed points in time. Shit."

"Okay, so this kinda sounds important," said Tony Stark, who was suddenly beside her looking irritated. "Someone wanna explain what you're talking about in something other than coded gibberish? Also, that Hitler story? You are so telling it if I have to tie you to a chair and employ tickle torture."

Several people on-screen rolled their eyes, but it was the American who once again took up the explanation. "Contrary to contemporary popular belief, time isn't a linear progression. The past and the future both affect the present and are interconnected like a..."

He trailed off as he searched for the correct words.

"Big ball of wibbly wobbly timey whimey," the dark-skinned woman interjected.

The American looked over his shoulder at her. "That sounds like something the Doctor would say." She nodded and he turned back to the screen. "We'll go with that. Anyway, within this ball there are a lot of things that can be changed, or altered and it's no big deal, the timeline adjusts and everything moves on. But, there are also certain events that absolutely have to happen in order for the timeline to continue without becoming an alternate universe of itself. 'Cause, yeah, alternate universes might exist, but when they start to overlap and collide you end up with a _really big problem_ , which is what Kang's grand plan threatens to do. If he changes history and disrupts those Fixed Points in Time, the timeline could fracture."

"Not could, has," said Amy quietly. She pointedly looked out the window. "I'd say we have about two days at most." She looked back to the group. "The world has already cracked. If we don't stop Kang within the next two days or so, the timeline _will_ shatter."

Every eye in the room stared at her in stunned silence.

"Fuck me, you can _see_ it?!" said the American. "I didn't think that was possible."

Amy shrugged. "I grew up with a crack between time and space in my bedroom wall. Now I guess that means I can see them."

"That must be the time anomaly Kang's sensors detected," said Tony thoughtfully. Then he shook his head. "You'd think the difference between Cap here and a big-ass crack in the sky would be sort of obvious. Anyway, I'm out of the loop, what's the plan again?"

"Amy charges her phone and then calls the Doctor," said Kate. "In the meantime, Mister Smith will work on hacking the ships' systems and bringing down their shields."

"And we'll drive down to London where we'll meet up with UNIT command," the American added. "Once those shields come down, Martha and I will teleport to the ships and attempt to disable their weapons, or take them over, whatever, while Mickey and Gwen help UNIT deal with those guys in the hover chairs."

Amy raised an eyebrow at the word 'teleport', wondering if they were using a wrist device like River's or whether they had something else entirely.

Kate nodded. "Colonel," she said to the UNIT officer. "Have you heard from Torchwood One yet?"

The officer straightened. "Yes, ma'am, they're prepping ordinance as we speak and running checks to ensure all systems are green to go should they be needed."

"Good. Not that I want to have to shoot those things down on top of a populated city, of course, but I want to be prepared for any and all eventualities. Osgood is still negotiating with the London Elders I take it?"

"I haven't heard from her yet, ma'am, so I can only assume so."

Amy frowned and then looked to where Osgood was standing to Rory's left. Osgood smiled at her reassuringly.

"Wait, isn't the UN liaison named Osgood?" she heard Steve ask Tony quietly.

"Oh my God, is that Captain America?!" the American on the screen practically squealed.

Steve jumped and looked back up to the TV screen with wide startled eyes. "Uh, yeah."

"Oh wow, I remember sneaking into one of the shows you did when you were in England! You were still wearing that bright blue get-up with the wings on the side of your head and that silly medieval shield. Aw, man, that moment when you lifted the motorcycle over your head... such a shame spandex hadn't been invented in the 40s yet–"

"–JACK!" the two women in the frame with him yelled.

"What? Oh, don't worry, I liked Union Jack too. His uniform wasn't nearly as form-fitting, but I have plenty of imagination to figure out the rest." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and the other three with him groaned.

"And here I thought we were going to manage a miracle," said Sarah-Jane dryly. "An entire conversation with Jack Harkness without a single sexual innuendo."

"That _would_ be a miracle," said the dark-skinned man sitting next to the dark-skinned woman just as dryly. He then looked out at Steve. "Sorry, Captain, it's just that Jack is Jack and you've got two legs and are breathing."

"I'm not sure having more than two legs would actually deter Jack," said the pale-skinned woman with a very pronounced Welsh accent. "It just might make him hesitate for thirty seconds longer."

"Hmm, the Androxians have eight appendages," said Jack thoughtfully. Then he grinned suggestively. "There are a lot of things you can do with eight appendages."

Sarah-Jane rolled her eyes. "Fantastic," she said. "Look, my son should be home soon and I need to start getting dinner ready. Is there anything else or are we done here?"

"I think we're about done," said Kate. She looked at her watch. "We'll attempt to make contact again at oh nine hundred your time and then again at thirteen hundred. Should we fail to connect, then proceed whenever you're ready after fourteen hundred. Sarah-Jane, Mister Smith has until sixteen hundred to hack the ships. If he hasn't done so, then Colonel you are to proceed with a silent evacuation and then contact Torchwood and tell them to fire when ready."

"Understood," said Sarah-Jane. Then her eyes softened. "Good luck, Katie."

"Thank you. You too, all of you, good luck and god's speed."

"Yes, good luck," Amy added. She smiled at the people looking back at her from the TV screen. "When this is all over and Rory and I are back in England, we should all meet for a pint and swap stories."

The dark-skinned woman grinned. "Brilliant idea! I'm Martha Jones, by the way, and this is Mickey Smith. I think we'll be needing that pint when this is all over."

Mickey snorted. "Pint my arse. I'll be going straight for the whiskey, thank you."

Amy laughed. It didn't make the knot of dread in her stomach go away, but it did loosen it.

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_ If you've read any of my other works then you all know I love my in-story cameos. Like Marvel, Doctor Who just has a wonderful wealth of characters to choose from. Having said that, I'd just like to make clear that while I did enjoy _Torchwood: Miracle Day_ for the most part I don't really consider it part of Doctor Who canon – more like something that happened in an alternate universe. I know, I know, crazy things happen within the new Doctor Who series that people at large seem to easily forget about all the time, but _Miracle Day_ just disrupted the world and the series' continuity a little too much for my taste. It doesn't fit within the universe for me and so, as far as this story goes, it didn't happen.


	9. Part Eight

Rory closed the door softly behind him so as not to disturb the children. Despite getting very little sleep the night before, their excitement had kept them wide awake, minds full of questions concerning the twenty-first century. And the Doctor.

Quite frankly, Rory was shocked they hadn't been joined by Tony and Steve, but he remembered overhearing that their teams were recovering from the battle that had resulted in the two of them being sent back in time in the first place. He could tell the two men were still trying to wrap their heads around the idea that while a week had passed for them, less than a day had passed for everyone else. Rory could sympathize.

Rory himself was trying very hard to look unaffected by twenty-first century marvels. He would take to his grave the fact that it had taken ten minutes of staring at the Keurig in the tiny staff kitchen to figure out how to make it produce coffee.

He walked past a string of offices to a small alcove where he found Amy, phone in hand, staring out of the tall windows and out onto the small lawn in the front of the building housing UNIT's temporary headquarters. Even in the middle of the night, illuminated only by street lamps and scant emergency lighting, it still managed to look clean and well-kept, the knee-high bushes along the front creating a clear property line.

Silently, he came to stand beside his wife. "So, did you manage to contact him?" he asked her.

"Not quite," said Amy, not yet looking away from the window. "His newest companion answered. I gave her the message and she said she's pass it along."

They were silent for a moment.

"You know, Kate said he'd regenerated again," said Amy after a few moments.

Rory nodded. "I wonder if he's finally ginger."

Amy finally looked over to him, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "No, apparently it's all white."

"I see."

"The children asleep?"

"Yes. Finally. Can you imagine what it's going to be like when they finally see the city?"

Amy smirked. "You mean like the first time you stepped out onto an alien planet? Or your first spaceship?"

Rory silently conceded the point. "Are you going to take Kate up on her offer to go shopping in the morning?"

"Yes, absolutely," Amy answered immediately. "I cannot wait to put on a pair of jeans again. Besides, we've all only got the one set of clothes and who knows when we'll have a chance to go otherwise. I'm on the fence as to whether or not I want to take Beth with me."

"She'd probably enjoy it, but she'd also slow you down wanting to see everything."

"Exactly."

Amy opened her mouth to say more, when there was a loud rumbling sound from outside. She closed her mouth and they shared a brief glance of 'what now?' to each other before turning to look out the window.

In the distance everything looked quiet. There was no smoke, no unexplained lights and no additional sounds or sirens. Rory scanned the street below them. Also nothing. The cars looked like they hadn't moved and he couldn't see any people moving about. He continued to scan further towards the building, until he got to where the perfectly manicured lawn of the import-export company was brutally disrupted by something that hadn't been there before.

"Amy!" he exclaimed, pointing it out to his wife.

She gasped. "Oh my god, that's–"

Amy didn't finish her sentence before they were both rushing off to the stairwell. Steve joined them part-way down, followed by another blond man carrying a bow and arrow and a petite woman with shoulder-length red hair and a cast on her arm. Rory narrowed his eyes at the cast, but left it for now.

Downstairs, the doors were already unlocked with UNIT soldiers standing guard, their weapons pointed towards the front lawn. Thankfully, they let them pass with only a nod of acknowledgement. Another group of soldiers was already standing around the disturbance on the lawn, carefully circling the three man-sized cylinders protruding out of the Earth on an angle. There were three other black-clad uniformed figures standing among the UNIT soldiers. A rather tall, imposing woman and two men. The second man's face was covered in a black mask shaped like a cat.

Rory turned to Steve. "Uh, is that a mask or is he really a cat-person?" he asked.

The other blond man let out a surprised snort of laughter.

"Um... that's the Black Panther, T'Challa, King of Wakanda," said Steve awkwardly. "The Black Panther is the traditional protector of Wakanda..." He trailed off and frowned. "Wait, have you actually met cat-people?"

Rory shrugged. "It was in the distant future."

Steve's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Woah, wait, cat-people are actually a thing?" the other man asked incredulously. "Like, there are aliens out there who look like cats?"

Rory hesitated for a moment. "You know, I'm not actually sure if they're aliens or the result of some sort of genetic splicing. Travelling with the Doctor you see so many strange things, you sometimes just accept them and don't ask about _every_ single detail."

The redhead with them was eyeing him speculatively. "So you're the guys who came back with Steve," she said after a moment.

Rory nodded. "I'm Rory and that's my wife, Amy," he said. "The children are upstairs asleep."

She nodded back. "I'm Natasha."

The blond man with the bow gave him a small half-wave. "Clint, aka Hawkeye."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't let you go near them until we've figured out what they are," he heard one of the UNIT soldiers say.

He looked over just as Amy rolled her eyes. "What they _are_ , are Silurian transport pods," she said and then used the soldier's surprise to shove past him.

Rory hurried after her, the Avengers on his heels. Amy reached out to touch the side of the pod. The top panel slid open.

"It's empty," she said and Rory could detect both relief and confusion in her voice. Then she looked up towards the various soldiers around her. "Did anyone see anything come out of these after they came up?"

The Black Panther stepped forward. "We were just returning from meeting with my Washington contacts when they appeared," he said, his voice smooth and somewhat muffled by the mask he was wearing. "They have done nothing else since arriving and nothing has exited them either."

"Could it be a malfunction?" Rory asked as he came to stand next to Amy.

Amy snorted disbelievingly. "That'd be one hell of a coincidence," she said. "The pods malfunctioning at exactly this moment in exactly this place, where we all happen to be?"

He nodded, thinking the same thing. "Then we're being sent for."

"Probably, yeah."

Their eyes met yet again and Rory already knew what Amy's would look like: bright green and glittering with excitement, her thirst for adventure shining through. It was one of the reasons he'd fallen in love with her, those shining, fearless eyes. He'd never really been adventurous, generally perfectly content with mundane, everyday things. And yet he'd gone on adventures, courted untold amounts of danger, traversed the galaxy and beyond – all for her, to be by her side to watch as her eyes gleamed and her whole face lit up, determined to face the next challenge before her. He only loved her all the more for the fact that her eyes gleamed the same way for every challenge, whether it be space monsters, psychotic killers, or having children.

"Go," he said. "I'll stay with the children and explain what's going on to Kate."

She smiled at him gratefully. Then she leaned over to kiss him and he met those familiar lips with his own, savouring the warmth that spread within him at the contact.

She pulled away and began to climb inside the pod. "Come on, Steve, looks like it's time to go meet the lizard people!" she called out.

Steve's expression changed from fond to alert in seconds. "Lizard people?" he asked and Rory could see a similar sort of excitement threatening to stretch his lips into a giddy grin. "You mean that wasn't just a story?"

"Only parts of it." Anything else she would have said was swallowed up as the pod's door slid shut and then there was a whoosh of wind as the pod disappeared with another rumble of shaking Earth, though quieter than the initial one.

Rory looked to Steve. "The underground lizard people didn't have dinosaurs," he replied in Amy's stead. "We met those on a spaceship of theirs hurtling towards Earth about a hundred or so years from now."

There was a long pause of silence.

"Okay, I feel like I've missed out on a crucial part of the conversation," said Clint as Steve walked up to a second pod.

As Rory walked over to help him open it, he saw the King of Wakanda casually wander over to the third.

"The Silurians are Earth's original inhabitants," Rory explained. "65 million years ago they detected a meteor headed towards the planet and, since they weren't able to stop it, they built a massive underground structure deep beneath the Earth's crust and put themselves into stasis so they could sleep through the extinction level event the meteor would cause. Unfortunately, the timer they set malfunctioned and so they've, uh, sort of overslept."

"Sixty-five million years ago?" said Clint, sounding incredulous. "Are you saying they're related to dinosaurs?! Hang on, there's a third pod ri– aww."

The Black Panther's pod disappeared with a whoosh and a rumble mere seconds behind Steve's.

Rory chuckled as he listened to Clint continue to complain about not getting to go meet the dinosaur people. It occurred to him to wonder if Amy's leaving to negotiate (he assumed) with a Silurian ambassador of some sort meant it would be up to him to go shopping in the morning. Maybe Beth would get to go shopping after all.

Or maybe he'd just get them all Avengers t-shirts and be done with it.

* * *

Riding in the pod was... an experience. Steve wasn't sure if a regular person would've felt things differently, but he felt surprisingly fine for the most part – except for the moments where his head felt like it was going to explode both from pressure and the loud noises surrounding him on all sides. It was like being inside a small, moving MRI machine except the clacking sounds were less intermittent and accompanied by constant rumbling. Just as he was on the verge of becoming severely claustrophobic, it suddenly came to a halt.

The systems around him powered down and the top slid open. Steve scrambled out immediately.

"Sorry, Steve, I didn't realize how crammed it would be in there for you," said Amy with a wince in his direction. "I don't think the Silurians are all that tall."

"Uh, that's okay," he said, trying to sound dismissive. "I've survived worse."

At least this hadn't hurt the way the vita ray chamber had.

He looked over and blinked in surprise. "T'Challa," he greeted his friend. "You came too."

T'Challa had taken his mask off and was looking slightly paler than usual. "As a child I had held a great fascination with dinosaurs," he said with his usual quiet dignity, which was only slightly undermined with the excited twinkle in his eye. He looked back at the pods thoughtfully. "Though not the most comfortable mode of transportation, I must admit the technology involved must be impressive. At the speed we must have been travelling, our heads should have exploded part-way down from pressure. It was also a much smoother journey than I would've expected."

Steve nodded. "Tony'll be Hulk-green with envy when he realizes he missed out on getting to examine them."

The corner of T'Challa's mouth quirked in amusement. "Indeed."

Then there was a soft hissing sound followed by a faint clunk of metal. They both looked over to where Amy was now standing in an open doorway leading to what looked like a corridor – looking entirely unaffected by their mode of transport.

"Well, are you two just going to stand there or are you coming?" Amy demanded.

They hurried over to her side.

Outside, in the ochre-coloured corridor, they were stopped short by a pair of guards – quite frankly, now that he saw them, Steve wondered why they hadn't been waiting for them inside the pod room. They immediately turned and pointed odd-looking weapons that partially resembled guns only with extremely wide muzzles that ended with short rounded antennas that reminded Steve of a larger, more menacing version of Marvin the Martian's ray gun. The weapons, however, quickly became secondary as he took in the appearance of Amy's lizard people.

Their faces were the only parts of them visible beneath grey, slightly shiny uniforms that started with clunky boots and ended with a turtleneck made of extremely fine chainmail – only due to his enhanced vision could Steve tell it wasn't woven out of some sort of yarn. The small green scales on their faces brightly contrasted their dull uniforms and while their faces had human-esque features, their heads then flared outward past their small, inset ears. Orange-yellow eyes stared at him coldly.

Steve slowly reached for his shield. These weren't some goofy, dumb, awkward-moving creatures; these were trained soldiers. Amy's book hadn't mentioned the advanced technology.

Amy stepped right up to the soldiers. "My name is Amelia Williams-Pond and I believe we've been expected," she said clearly. If she was scared of the soldiers and their weapons, she didn't show it.

"Stand down!"

The two soldiers immediately relaxed their stances and lowered their weapons. Steve looked past them to the woman striding towards them. Her uniform was just as grey as the soldiers' and equally covered her from neck to toe, but a gold trim around her collar and a heavy red cloak that came to her knees seemed to indicate she wasn't just an ordinary soldier. A man and a woman followed behind her, without cloaks and with less elaborate trims around their collars.

The soldiers stepped aside to allow her to pass between them. When she was standing before them, Steve was shocked to note she was a full head shorter than he was – somehow she'd seemed taller from a distance. In fact, he seemed to tower over all the Silurians.

She eyed all three of them with sharp, analytical eyes before her gaze rested on Amy. "Amy, it's good to see you again," she said.

Steve's eyebrows rose in surprise and he glanced at Amy. She looked stunned.

"Uh, sorry, I'm afraid I can't remember where we've met..." she said.

The Silurian's eyes widened slightly in understanding. "Oh, of course," she said with a chuckle. "My apologies, it's been twenty years. I remember now: you warned me that when we met again, you wouldn't actually know me."

"The joys of time travel," said Amy dryly.

"Yes, indeed. In which case, allow me to introduce myself. I am General Larrsa of the Third Branch."

Amy smiled and stuck out her hand. "Then it's an honour to meet you, General Larrsa."

The Silurian general removed one of her thick gloves to reveal an almost dainty-looking hand covered in small green scales and decidedly less dainty-looking pointed claws. She shook Amy's hand and then her eyes strayed pointedly towards Steve and T'Challa.

"And your companions?" she asked.

Amy stepped away and gestured to each of them. "This is Captain Steve Rogers and King T'Challa of Wakanda. Both are leaders of men and renown warriors."

Steve nodded respectfully to the General. "It's an honour to meet you, ma'am," he said as her eyes bore into him.

"You have seen combat," she remarked after a moment.

He blinked. "Uh, yes, ma'am. There was a war a long time ago."

She raised a hairless eyebrow at him. "I suspect that our definitions of 'a long time ago' greatly differ, nevertheless, I am relieved to see my forces will be fighting along-side experienced warriors. Even if they are apes."

Steve blinked. "Your forces?"

"Of course, that is what we agreed upon." General Larrsa paused, frowned, and then looked to Amy. "Will agree upon, in your timeline of events. Hm, I see now why you were so persistent; you already know I'd eventually agree."

Amy shrugged. "Again: the joys of time travel?"

"Apparently. Regardless, from what you mentioned last we met, we do not have much time. Follow me."

The two Silurians who'd arrived with her waited for Steve, Amy and T'Challa to pass before falling into step behind them.

"Are you aware of what's going on?" T'Challa asked Amy quietly.

"Not really, no," she answered. Then a door opened in front of them and Larrsa stepped through. Amy paused for a moment. "Only one way to find out, though."

Steve couldn't find a single reason to disagree.

* * *

The first thing Amy noticed upon climbing out of the pod again – other than to take weary notice of the sun that was peeking in through patches of cloudy sky – were the soldiers now crowding the front lawn. The US army soldiers. More than a few had their weapons in hand and were watching her small group suspiciously. Thankfully a circle of UNIT soldiers surrounding the transport pod's burrowing site seemed to be stopping them from actually pointing their weapons at them.

The pair of UNIT soldiers who'd accompanied Osgood to meet them yesterday stepped forward to greet them.

"Ms Stewart left orders for you to be escorted to her upon your arrival," one of them told Amy loudly.

Amy nodded. "Of course," she answered, wondering if the escort was mostly for show.

"Cap!"

They paused as the Falcon – whom they'd all met yesterday – came in for a landing beside them. Amy heard several weapons being cocked and her frown deepened.

"Hey, Sam," Steve greeted. "Uh, what's with those guys?"

The Falcon pursed his lips into a hard line before responding. "They arrived at daybreak," he said. "Apparently, someone doesn't trust UNIT to take care of Kang. I just wanted to warn you, Ross is inside."

Amy saw Steve's jaw tense as one of his fists clenched tightly. "Thanks for the warning. Has he tried anything?"

"Oh he tried all right, but Stewart told us to get scarce and got the Wakandan guards to protect the injured." He looked to T'Challa. "She didn't think you'd mind and they seemed okay with it."

T'Challa nodded. "That was the correct assumption."

"Do I want to know who this Ross character is?" Amy asked.

"The Secretary of Defense," Steve answered darkly. "Let's just say he's not exactly a fan of super powered people."

Amy sighed. "Lovely. Well, at least we come bearing good news."

Steve snorted. "I'm not sure he'll see it that way."

She might not have had any idea who Thaddeus Ross was, but as they approached the conference room, they could certainly hear him, the bellow in his voice more than hinting at his prior military experience.

"Mom!"

No sooner had Amy turned around then she found herself with an armful of clinging twelve-year-old.

"Mom, I'm so glad you're back," Timothy immediately began to babble. "The soldiers showed up this morning and they're our soldiers so they should be the good guys, but the man in charge kept saying they're going to arrest Captain America. They can't arrest Captain America, mom, he's a hero!"

Amy felt her eyes widen and she looked to Steve, who was wincing down at Timothy and looking slightly embarrassed. He wasn't, however, looking guilty. She looked back down at her son and ran a hand through his hair. He went silent and looked up at her with teary eyes.

"Timothy, love, while I don't know what's going on or why that man thinks he needs to arrest Captain America, I can guarantee you one thing," she said softly. " _No one_ is arresting _anyone_ while there's a time travelling ecoterrorist to stop."

That seemed to lighten Timothy's mood. Amy looked up and saw Rory standing farther up the corridor, a worried-looking Beth and Ben standing beside him. She smiled at them.

"Now, I have to go tell Ms Stewart what we've learned," she told Timothy. "And you should go back to your father and brother and sister. I'll meet up with you when I can."

Timothy nodded. "We've been learning about the Avengers!" he said brightly. "Did you know they've even got two girls on their team? The Black Widow looks really cool! Hawkeye says she can kill a guy with just her pinkies! And one of them is just called Vision and he's real funny-looking mom. He's got purple skin and a yellow stone in middle of his forehead, like it's just growin' there."

Amy blinked down at him. "Well, as long as you're not bothering them too much..." she said carefully.

"Is Tony there?" Steve suddenly asked.

Timothy turned to him. "Uh... not anymore. This black man dragged him in to have his ribs looked at, but he left right after the doctors finished." Timothy scrunched his nose up. "He's a really big baby when he's hurt. Not the black man, though, he barely made any noise when they were lookin' at his burn. He can't walk well, 'cause he was hurt real bad in a fight."

Amy could see the effort it was taking Steve not to laugh as he knelt down next to her son. "That'd be Colonel Rhodes," he said. "You should go back and ask him about the War Machine."

Timothy's eyes widened. "War Machine? What's that?"

"Well now, that's not my story to tell, son."

"But you should hurry before the medics are finished with him and he leaves again," T'Challa cut in gently, a soft smile on his face.

Timothy turned to T'Challa, his eyes widening as he took in his armour and the mask he was holding under his arm. "Oh boy, that's right," he said. "I'll go ask him then! See you later."

And then he was running off down the corridor towards the rest of his family. Amy waved to them.

"You have a lovely family," T'Challa told her.

Amy turned and smiled at him. "Thank you." She side-eyed them. "Just how pissed is your friend going to be with you that you just sicced my son on him?"

Steve shrugged. "He'll get over it."

The voices on the other side of the door grew louder as the UNIT soldiers opened the door for them. Amy took a deep breath and squared her shoulders before stepping inside.

Kate looked slightly dishevelled – like she'd been dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn after very little sleep in order to deal with the US army. She was standing facing them on the other side of the conference table, her arms crossed in front of her and her eyes sparking with anger. Across from her stood a tall, thin man with white hair and a moustache wearing an impeccably-ironed civilian suit, not a hair or crease out of place. Amy assumed this was Ross.

Between them, at the foot of the table, stood Tony, looking not only tired and frustrated, but like he wasn't quite sure who to be frustrated with. He was the first to notice their entrance. His expression darkened.

"As always, you have the worst timing ever, Spangles," he said dryly.

That caught Ross' attention. He immediately whirled around and pointed at Steve.

"Colonel, arrest that man!" he said.

"Belay that order," Kate barked half a second later. She glowered at the former general. "Mister Ross, as I've already told you, this is a UNIT operation and Captain America and his comrades have temporarily joined forces with us in the name of saving the world. Which should, Mister Secretary, be _your_ priority as well."

"You have no jurisdiction on US soil!"

"The United States is a part of the United Nations just as much as any country and while, under normal circumstances, yes, I would relinquish jurisdiction to you as the home country, the situation is far from normal. Your armies are too visible and Kang's technology too far beyond your reach. My jurisdiction comes from both having the experience and the resources to mount said attack."

Ross scoffed. "Exactly which resources are you talking about? All I see is a small contingent of soldiers." He looked over at the soldiers who'd escorted them in and sneered. "And aliens."

She felt the two soldiers stiffen and she frowned.

"Allies," a familiar voice corrected, sounding colder than Amy had ever heard it.

Osgood stepped out from behind them and came to stand just in front of Amy. "We are all allies in this room."

Ross' eyes narrowed at her. "And which one are you exactly?" he demanded.

One of Osgood's eyebrows rose slightly. "Does it matter?" she asked mildly.

"Of course it does! Do you think I'm not aware of what you're doing? Of _what_ you're letting into my country and refusing to provide the Defence Department with their identities so that we can keep track of and control them!"

"The objective is peaceful co-habitation, not control."

"Enough!" said Kate. "No matter what you think of the Zygons, Mister Secretary, they are not the threat here. In fact, they are quite clearly standing by our side willing to risk their lives for the planet they are currently calling home."

Amy's eyes widened, her gaze straying to the identical twin soldiers. No, not identical twins, she supposed. One human, one Zygon. Which was... interesting.

Tony threw his hands up. "Okay, what the hell are Zygons?"

"Shape-shifting aliens from the planet Zygon," Amy answered automatically. "Their planet was destroyed, I think."

One of the UNIT soldiers looked at her and nodded.

Amy cocked her head thoughtfully. "I suppose this means you no longer have to trap your human double in a cocoon?" she asked.

Surprisingly, it was the other soldier who answered. "No, ma'am, we've developed a way to take on a human's form without putting them into stasis and thus allowing them to move around freely," he confirmed. "It doesn't actually require close proximity either."

"But we've found it useful in battle to have identical soldiers fighting side by side, especially on small ops," the first soldier added.

Meanwhile, Ross snorted. "Allies or not, it still only gives you a small contingent of soldiers, hardly what I'd call a significant force."

"I also have the Avengers, or have you forgotten that they now fall under the jurisdiction of the United Nations as per the Sokovia Accords?" said Kate.

Amy cleared her throat loudly. "You also have the Silurian Army," she stated.

Kate, Osgood and all the UNIT soldiers in the room turned to her with shock written all over their faces. Everyone else looked confused.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" said Kate. "I have what?"

Amy smirked. "Two divisions of Silurian ground forces and one airborne division, standing by and ready to fight along side UNIT and the Avengers to protect the planet."

Kate just stared at her for a long moment before shaking herself out of her shock. "Well, that's fortuitous, if entirely unexpected. It took you only three hours to negotiate that?"

"Oh, no, not at all. After this is over, Rory and I will have to get the Doctor to take us twenty years into the past in order to meet with General Larrsa of the Third Branch in order to arrange this."

"And what is this, more aliens?" Ross demanded.

Kate smirked. "Oh, not at all, Mister Ross," she said. "The Silurians are entirely native to Earth. In fact, they are the planet's original inhabitants."

Beside her, Osgood was frowning thoughtfully. "UNIT's encountered them before, but I've never heard tell of an airborne division," she said.

Amy shrugged. "Apparently the airborne divisions were almost exclusive to the Third Branch, which you can more or less think of as the North American Branch, give or take a few pieces of Asia and Europe where their territory got divided up by the tectonic plates shifting about."

"This is unacceptable!" Ross stated. "You are planning on bringing more unknown forces onto US soil without our authorization. UNIT does not have the jurisdiction to do so!"

"UNIT can operate within the boundaries of any member country of the United Nations," Kate insisted.

"But you are not in charge here!"

Kate took a deep breath, clearly rallying herself for another rebuff, when a male voice from behind Amy said:

"Actually, I do believe I'm in charge."

Amy turned along with the rest of the room to get a look at the newcomer. He was a tall man with short wavy white hair. He was wearing sunglasses and a burgundy velvet blazer with blue jeans as he leaned casually against the doorframe, his hands in his pockets and legs crossed at the ankle.

He inclined his head so that he could look at them over his glasses. "I am still Emergency President of the World, am I not?"


	10. Part Nine

For a long, drawn-out moment, the room seemed to hold its breath.

And then Kate Stewart smiled. "Yes, you most certainly are, Doctor," she said. "I'm glad you finally made it."

Amy, for her part, folded her arms over her chest and gave the Doctor a look. "What perfect timing," she said dryly. "Were you standing behind the door waiting for a cue to make your grand entrance?"

A dark-skinned woman with curly black hair popped out from behind him. "He really was," she said with a wide grin. "He was standing outside listening in for a while before coming in."

The Doctor sent her a side-ways glare.

Amy returned the young woman's grin. "Hello, you must be Bill," she said. "I'm Amy."

Bill's face brightened further and she walked around the Doctor to get into the room. "Hello! It's nice to put a face to a name," she said. She came closer and froze. Her jaw dropped. "Oh my god! You're Amy Williams-Pond, the Girl Who Stopped Waiting!"

Tony frowned. "Okay, I'm missing something," he said. "Again. This is starting to become a thing and I don't like it."

Rory turned to him with a smirk. "I married a super model," he told him. Then his face became serious. "Also, proposition my wife again and I will punch you."

Steve glared at Tony disapprovingly while Tony's mouth opened and closed silently a few times.

"What?!" Tony finally exclaimed. "When did that happen? Seriously, Spangles, stop giving me that look! I swear I never propositioned Amy!"

"April 16th, 2013," said Rory with a completely straight face.

Amy, for her part, rolled her eyes. "Fashion Week New York is in February, dear," she said. "And given how drunk Tony was that evening, I highly doubt he'd remember it."

Bill, meanwhile, was beginning to frown as she watched Amy. "No offense, but you look a lot older in person than you did in your photos. Not that you don't still look good. I mean, you're still absolutely gorgeous in that movie star kind of way."

Amy snorted, cutting Bill off before she could talk herself into a verbal corner. "Time travel has a way of creeping up on you, especially when you do as much of it as Rory and I once did. Getting stranded in the 1930s didn't exactly help with that."

"Oh." Bill blinked. Then she made a face. "I'm glad that wasn't me. Getting called the Doctor's servant when we were in the 1800s was bad enough. Although watching the Doctor punch the arrogant twat was almost worth it."

Amy gaped. "The Doctor punched someone?!"

"I would've paid to have seen that," Rory commented from behind her.

Someone loudly cleared their throat. Amy felt the corners of her lips twitch in amusement and briefly met Rory's equally amused eyes. She touched Bill's arm as she passed her, giving her a look that said they would definitely talk more later. Then she approached the white-haired man leaning against the doorframe and smiled even as her eyes took in the nuances of his new regeneration. The physical differences between the Doctor she'd traveled with and this one were obvious, but there were other, less obvious ones.

The glasses, for a start. Deliberately hiding his eyes was a marked difference. His body language was more closed off, more still than the Doctor she'd known. And his posture seemed to be striving for casual, and yet Amy could see the way his fingers twitched, the way his muscles vibrated with suppressed nerves – on her Doctor it would've been energy, but on this man she could tell it was nerves.

He was different in so many ways and yet, even without the grand entrance, Amy would've known this man anywhere. She smiled at him.

"Hello, Doctor," she said. "It's good to see you again."

Her words, simple thought they were, seemed to break some sort of spell and the Doctor unwound himself, some of the tension easing from his posture as he stepped forward. He took off his glasses and folded them, but didn't put them away, instead holding them carefully in his hands. Eyes older than she could possibly imagine looked back at her, full of wisdom and a spark of joy – and heavy with grief.

A dark pit of dread opened in her heart at the sight, but her smile didn't waver.

He smiled back, his smile slightly awkward. "Hello, Amy, Rory," he said softly. "It's good to see you both again too. I never thought it would happen... I suppose this idiot with the giant flying sword masquerading as a spaceship outside is to thank for that."

"Inadvertently."

He took a deep breath and Amy saw the fingers holding his glasses fidget briefly. "I–you know I would've done something if I could have. But there are rules against that sort of thing, you see, and we'd already changed the past twice in that exact moment and exact time and, well, the laws of time aren't really something you want to bend too much. Not that I really have to tell you what happens when the laws of time are broken, you're both aware of the consequences. But if I could have gone and brought you home then–"

Amy covered the space between them and threw her arms around him, making sure to hold on tightly. "We know," she whispered even as she felt Rory slip his arms around both of them.

It took a few seconds, and then the Doctor relaxed in their arms and returned the embrace.

Somewhere behind her, she heard Ross protest about something, but she tuned him out. The Doctor was here. Ross barely mattered anymore.

They untangled themselves, but the closeness between them remained. And the Doctor's smile finally reached his eyes, shining brightly through the grief.

"What happened wasn't your fault," Amy said firmly. "You did everything you could to prevent it, remember. And when Rory was sent away by the Weeping Angel assassin, I followed him with my eyes wide open. I knew we couldn't ever go back, but it kept its word and I was sent to the same place and time as my husband. It might not have had as many adventures as before, but we built a life for ourselves."

"We were happy," Rory added. "We have children now."

Amy grinned. "They're very excited to meet you."

The Doctor frowned and glanced briefly down to where her womb was. "But I thought you couldn't have anymore children?"

"They're adopted, but that doesn't make them any less ours," said Amy, an eyebrow raised in challenge.

"Oh, no, of course not," said the Doctor. "Why did you leave then if you were happy?"

"The opportunity presented itself unexpectedly," Rory answered. "And to save the world."

"Exactly," Amy agreed. "Or are you telling us you don't about the crack in time and space?"

The Doctor's face lit up with surprised delight and his lips split into a grin. "I'd forgotten just how amazing the two of you were."

Amy's grin widened, because there, there was the excited grin she remembered, finally a distinct shade of the Doctor she'd known.

"Then let's go save the world, shall we?" she said. "For old time's sake."

"Yes, absolutely! That's a splendid idea!" He then turned his attention to the others in the room. "Ah, hello Osgood, I see your new integrated unit was approved. Good for you. Kate! Splendid to see you again! And... actually, I don't think I know you."

Ross glowered at the Doctor, clearly unimpressed by the man. Amy chuckled. No, the Doctor didn't _look_ impressive. He wasn't some muscle-bound hero, or a gun-totting commando, and he didn't really have superpowers either. He was impressive precisely _because_ he was neither of those things.

She exchanged amused glances with Rory and Bill.

"I'm Thaddeus Ross, the Secretary of Defense for the United States of America," said Ross after he'd held the Doctor's gaze for a few moments. If he'd been expecting the Doctor to flinch at his assessing gaze, he'd been sorely disappointed even if he didn't show it. "And I don't accept your authority, _Doctor_. Who exactly are you that you think you can suddenly show up and give orders?"

The Doctor snorted. "Well, for a start I only just got here and therefore haven't actually given any orders yet," he said with a superior haughtiness that Amy blinked at – that was new. "As for why I'm in charge, mostly because I am much smarter and cleverer than you are and because I'm the one who's going to defeat this... this..."

"Kang," Bill volunteered.

"Right, yes, Kang. Which is really quite an awful name isn't it? I almost expect him to have a large pot on his head that goes 'klang' every time you hit it."

"Well, he is wearing this weird blue-tinted thing that looks like a hazmat suit," Tony pipped up. "No idea if it goes 'klang' when you hit it, but I'm all in favour of finding out!"

"A blue-tinted visor, you say? Hmm..." The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment. "The Moon Colonies used environmental suits like that for repairs to the infrastructure's exterior. You see, they made the visors using a silicone-based mineral found deep within the crust, which made the visors somewhat elastic and yet nearly indestructible, able to withstand tremendous heat and cold, as well as pressure, but also gave it a blue tint."

"Well, Kang is apparently from a Moon colony," said Amy. "So that fits."

"He is?" said the Doctor, looking surprised. "I mean, oh, you already knew that. Well, then you already know how out-of-place his ability to travel through time is. After all, the Moon Colonies were mostly abandoned by the time the Time Agency was founded."

"Time Agency?" Ross asked. "What sort of nonsense are you spouting here, Doctor?! There is no such thing–"

"–Of course there isn't. Well, not yet in any case. Which is what I just said, so do pay attention." He clapped his hands together, turning back to Kate. "Now then, has anyone spoken to this Klang fellow?"

Kate was immediately all business again. "No, we've been hailing his ship in an attempt to open a line of communication, but, last I heard, no one's had any luck. Kang had, of course, managed to hack our communications satellites in order to broadcast his intentions and his demands, but he seems otherwise entirely uninterested in speaking to us us."

"He sort of talked to us when he attacked Stark Mansion," Steve pointed out.

Tony snorted. "That was hardly a conversation," he said. "More like the rantings of an ego-maniacal madman who thinks he's smarter than everyone else."

"He's not smart enough to know not to play with forces and science he doesn't understand," the Doctor muttered darkly.

Out of the corner of her eye, Amy saw Tony flinch and wondered what that was about.

"Kang isn't answering any of our hails either," Ross added grudgingly.

The Doctor nodded. "Well then it seems to me, the first thing we need to do is give him a chance to leave peacefully and of his own volition," he declared.

Everyone in the room blinked at him. All except for Amy, Rory, and Bill, who exchanged excited grins. Because this – the moment when the Doctor finally decided on a completely insane and yet somehow workable plan – this was what they'd been waiting for.

* * *

Hidden from sight atop one of the light fixtures, Antman and Wasp looked down on the room, watching the drama unfold as Kate Stewart took on former General Thaddeus Ross. They'd originally retreated here in order to make sure at least one of their group knew what was going on – in case they suddenly had to leave. Because anyone who'd ever worked with Ross knew he was _that_ petty.

Hope could be patient when it was required of her, but she hated not being in the thick of things. Still, there was something to be said for being able to watch things unfold without the need to censor her facial expressions. Especially since Scott was too busy having the same reactions she was to use hers against her – only more verbally.

He seemed particularly giddy at the idea that they were going to be fighting along-side an army of lizard people. Hope just thought it sounded like something out of a bad sci-fi B movie. Turned out, Scott _loved_ bad sci-fi B movies. She wasn't quite sure why that surprised her.

Lizard people – or, rather Silurians – aside, she was still stuck on the revelation that a race of shape-shifting aliens were apparently living on Earth with the knowledge of the UN. Or, possibly a branch of the UN. Hope wasn't entirely where UNIT fit into the hierarchy of the United Nations, since they seemed to be more than just the usual Peace Keepers.

"You know, I think I'm kinda starting to like this woman," Scott had told her at one point. "I wonder why the UN sent Ross instead of her to talk to the Avengers about the Accords."

Hope didn't have an answer for him. Why was Ross, of all people, the one chosen to present the accords to the Avengers instead of someone more neutral, someone with more diplomatic skills?

Neither one of them recognized the man who easily cut into the repetitive argument between Stewart and Ross, but the way the room became immediately charged with both tension and excitement, made the two of them lean over a bit further. And then Kate Stewart gave them a name: the Doctor.

Ever since they'd arrived at this temporary base with UNIT, they'd been hearing whispers of the Doctor. No name, just the title. However, it was the _way_ the name had been spoken that had initially caught their attention: like a prayer, a savior, and a secret weapon all at once. And every mention of his name was suffused with thin tendrils of hope, but also trepidation. It took her a while to work out that it was because they weren't entirely sure he was going to show up to help, but they really, really hoped he did.

And now here he was and both Hope and Scott craned their ears to catch every single word spoken down below them. They glared at Ross in unison for starting up an argument with Stewart once again, because his voice drowned out the softly-spoken words between Amy and the Doctor.

As a savior, he really didn't look like much. There was nothing heroic, nor magical-looking about him. Until his eyes lit up with excitement at the prospect of challenging Kang the Conqueror, not an ounce of fear to be seen, as he confidently told Ross he would stop Kang. And several people below them grinned, as though the man's mere presence managed to reassure them everything would be okay in a way that neither the presence of the Avengers nor an army of Silurians could.

The Doctor didn't bother consulting with anyone, just slipped his sunglasses back over his eyes and rushed over to the cobbled-together transmitter.

"Alien technology," Scott said beside her suddenly. "That's why I didn't recognize what they were doing: that amplifying device they're using to get past the jammers must be alien tech. Probably Zygon, seeing as how we're working together with them. Or they're working with us. Whatever."

Hope nodded. That made sense; the device certainly _looked_ alien.

There was a soft whirling sound and then the device began to pulse a yellow-green light. The television screen turned on. At first it was black. Then some faint static appeared. And then the whole screen flashed and they were looking at the deck of a ship. Two green-clad men and a woman looked up from their consoles in alarm.

"Ah, hello, there," said the Doctor with a friendly, casual ease. "I'd like to speak to your leader. Could you run along and fetch him for me, please? I'll wait."

All three blinked up at him, as though they couldn't decide whether it was his appearance or his polite demeanor that shocked them more. After a few moments, the three exchanged a quick, panicked look and then the woman got up and rushed away.

The Doctor's faint reflection on the screen looked completely unconcerned as he slouched slightly and slipped his hands into his jean pockets to wait.

"You're just going to let him speak on behalf of this planet?" Ross asked Stewart with a glare just as Vision quietly slipped into the room through the back wall.

"Of course I am," said Stewart matter-of-factly. "He's the Doctor. And while I could list his many, many qualifications, right now the most important one is that he's the only person standing in this room whom Kang _can't_ dismiss."

When Kang stepped in front of the screen, he was scowling through his blue visor. Hope noted that he seemed to be the only person on the bridge wearing one.

"Aaah, excellent!" the Doctor began immediately. "You must be Klang."

Kang's scowl deepened. "My name is Kang the Conqueror!" he declared. "And I'll admit, I'm somewhat impressed that you managed to hack my ship's systems in order to force communications like this. I didn't except something so... advanced from a backwards twenty-first century human."

"Gallifreian actually," the Doctor corrected him mildly.

Kang was silent for a moment. "Excuse me?" he then said slowly.

"You called me a backwards twenty-first century human. I'm not. Human, I mean. Or backwards, or from twenty-first century Earth if we get right down to it, but one must always prioritize these things. And I'm not human, I'm a Time Lord. My name is the Doctor, good to meet you."

Kang's eyes widened. "The last of the Time Lords," he said, the words sounding breathless, full of awe, as though forced out of him without his mind's consent. Sure enough, in the span of a single blink, the wide-eyed awe was gone and Kang's face was once again a cold mask. "There have been whispers, rumours of such a man, though I was unable to find anything more substantial than legends, stories to corroborate his existence. There is, in fact, no evidence of the existence of any race known as the Time Lords. And you expect me to believe you are this mythological figure without any sort of proof?"

He continued on for a while longer, the Doctor seemingly content to let him speak, but Hope's mind was stuck on the phrase 'the last of the Time Lords'.

Eventually, Kang went silent, staring down at the Doctor expectantly. Triumphantly.

The Doctor looked highly amused by what Kang had been saying. "You know," he began lightly. "It's quite mind-boggling that you actually, genuinely believe yourself superior to these humans living in the twenty-first century when in reality, you are no less of a child. Oh, certainly, you're a little older, a little ahead of them in school, but you're still just as stupid."

"Hey!" Hope heard Tony Stark protest quietly and scowl at the Doctor. A shadow appeared behind her and she looked over her shoulder. Spiderman gave her a small wave from his spot on the ceiling. Hope and Scott returned it before turning back to the screen below.

Kang had remained silent, but his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"If anything, you're actually more stupid than they are," the Doctor continued. "At least they know they don't have all the answers, but _you_ , you think you do. And that's the sort of stupid that becomes dangerous. What happened, Kang? Did you find a timeship and decide to use it? Did traveling through time give you ideas? Did you think you could just change history without any consequences?!"

"I saved it!" Kang suddenly yelled, his eyes blazing fury even from behind the blue visor. "It crashed just past the experimental gardens, its two crewmembers injured past saving. Even dented and smoking, it was still beautiful, but by the time I arrived, the two fools inside had set the self-destruct!"

The Doctor nodded. "A Time Agency ship then," he said mostly to himself – and possibly for the benfit of his audience. "It's standard procedure."

If Kang heard him, he chose to ignore him. "It took me years, but I finally managed to make sense of the technology and complete repairs. I tested it a few times, over-shooting my return slightly the first time so that instead of three hours, I'd been gone three years. My second test was much more successful, but I digress. If you truly are who you say you are, if you have seen the future of this world, then surely you understand the value of what I'm doing! According to my research this is the ideal time, when most of the world's societies have shifted towards being more open and accepting, and the planet's ecosystem hasn't yet reached the point of no return. It can still be saved! I can save the Earth, the planet that gave birth to the human race, the planet humans plundered and destroyed and then abandoned like nothing more than a chewed-up wad of gum."

Hope's felt her breath catch at the description of the Earth. At the passion that burned in Kang's eyes as he described his desire to save the planet – a planet whose future he'd _seen_. He was from a Moon Colony, she suddenly remembered, and you could see the Earth from the Moon. He'd probably grown up looking up at the night sky and seeing the dim, leftover, burnt-out wreck of a planet his race had once called home.

She felt tears burn in her eyes.

"Damn," Scott said, his voice sounding rather shaky.

"Yeah," Spiderman agreed softly.

Below them, the room had gone silent, all eyes glued to the television screen.

And then the Doctor sighed and removed his sunglasses, carefully tucking them into his breast pocket.

"Such is the burden of time travel," he said, his voice soft. "To enjoy a lovely day walking through the marketplace of Pompeii, knowing that in two day's time everything around you will be swallowed by the volcano in the distance. That the beautiful young woman who served you tea and the best sweet dumplings you've ever tasted in Hiroshima, will be dead tomorrow, along with everyone around her."

"It's why you shove Hitler into a storage cupboard instead of killing him," Tony suggested.

Hope frowned at the bizarrely random analogy. The Doctor froze with his mouth open for a moment and then closed it with a frown. He looked over his shoulder at them.

"Oh, right, I'd forgotten about that," he said.

Tony threw his hands up in exasperation. "How is shoving Hitler into a storage cupboard an afterthought to anyone?!"

The Doctor shrugged. "It was a very busy day." He turned back to Kang. "Yes, it's why, if you happen to crash into Hitler's office in Berlin, you shove Hitler into a storage cupboard instead of killing him. You see, some things in the timeline can be changed, little things can be altered and it doesn't really affect the universe at large, but there are other events that are far more significant and changing them brings about dire consequences. What you're proposing is noble, yes, but deeply misguided. You're a child whose gotten his hands on his father's gun. You have no knowledge of how to use it properly, nor have you ever bothered to learn the rules, the guidelines that come with using it and are not truly aware of the things that could go wrong."

He took a deep breath.

"You must stop this now, Kang. Go back home to your own century and marvel at the wonders the human race _has_ achieved, not obsess over its failures."

Kang was silent for a long moment but by the way his expression hardened, Hope knew before he spoke that the Doctor's plea had gone unheard.

"Clearly you cannot be the Time Lord of legends," he said coldly. "Surely, a true time traveler would understand the value of fixing the mistakes of the past."

"Mistakes have their own value," the Doctor countered. "They are lessons of what not to repeat, what should never, ever be allowed to happen. They tell us what needs to change, what lessons we still need to learn."

"Doctor – if that is even your name – you are a fool and a sentimental fool at that." The superior sneer was back in Kang's demeanor. "I will change the world and I will change the future. I will not allow this planet to be destroyed the way it once was. Neither you, nor anyone else on this planet have the power to stop me!"

The Doctor chuckled darkly. "I think you'll find that humans, in any century, can be quite resourceful, especially when their backs are to the wall. Doubly so, when they're told something is impossible."

And then, between one blink and the next, the last tendrils of the lightheartedness in the Doctor's face vanished, replaced by an expression that was deathly serious. In the reflection of the television screen, Hope saw a pair of sharp eyes staring back, skewering her with their icy intensity, looking both ageless and yet impossibly old. They were eyes that carried the weight of having seen empires rise and fall, civilizations born, galaxies destroyed. The being that stood below her looked like just a man, but his eyes belonged to an angry god.

She shivered despite herself.

"I am the Doctor," he said in a dark, heavy tone. "I am the man whom the Daleks called the Oncoming Storm, the last of the Time Lords, and I am giving you one last chance to leave of your own free will. Know that if you don't, I _will_ stop you. I happen to like this planet and its people, warts and all, and I will not allow your actions to cause its destruction."

"I-I take it the Avengers do not intend to surrender to me?" Kang asked, attempting to look unimpressed by the Doctor's words, but Hope could tell he was shaken. "Very well, then. I suppose there's no point waiting for the deadline. They will serve a fitting example to the rest of the world."

He made a gesture to the side and the screen went abruptly blank.

"Well, that could've gone better," Tony commented.

"Oh, I don't know, I thought it went quite well," said the Doctor as he spun around to face the rest of the room. "I now know where his time travel technology comes from, which will only make it that much easier to disable and reprogram."

"I'll tell Sarah-Jane to let Harkness know," said Kate, already typing away at her cellphone. "Incidentally, Secretary Ross, I received a message from Sarah-Jane just a few minutes ago. Her group managed to hack into the ship floating above London and figured out how to bring down its shield. They're preparing to infiltrate it as we speak."

She looked up, her eyes smug for moment before a cool, professional mask covered it all up. "She says she's forwarding the information to our Moscow branch, but isn't sure where to relay it to Washington to make sure someone gets it who can do something with it."

Ross, to his credit, hesitated only for a moment. "Tell her to send it to General Houlihan at the Pentagon. I'll call her myself in person to make sure she knows the information is legit." He frowned, his eyes flicking towards the Doctor for a moment. "I might not be happy about it, but you seem to have the situation well in hand here. I will inform the colonel in charge of the squadron outside that he is now under your command."

Kate nodded. "Thank you, Mister Secretary, I appreciate your support in the matter," she said.

"Ensuring that our forces in Washington have the information they need to defeat that ship is my priority right now," he said with a brisk nod. "Good luck to you all."

He left without another word.

"Well, that was..." said Tony.

"Our cue to get working," Kate finished for him. "It won't take long for Kang to find us. And I have a feeling he's going to want to make an example of us personally, if only to make sure everyone knows the Avengers are, indeed, dead."

"Yes, well, I'll leave you lot to figure that part out amongst yourselves," the Doctor declared, his eyes once more gleaming with excitement. "Amy, Rory, are you coming?"

Amy and Rory exchanged a single glance.

"Yes, absolutely," Rory answered.

"But, first, we have to say good-bye to the children," Amy added. She glared at the Doctor when it looked like he was ready to protest. "We are not leaving on a dangerous mission without seeing them first."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Yes, fine, alright," he said, waving them off. "But hurry it up."

He and Bill followed after them.

Hope exchanged a look with Scott and then the two of them flew down to the conference table.

"Once Ross' colonel gets here, we can start outlining a plan of attack," said Kate into the silence that had ensued. "I have a few strategies in mind, but I'd appreciate any input with regards to your own abilities."

"Actually," said Steve, eyeing Osgood and her two guards thoughtfully. "I have an idea about that."


	11. Part Ten

The sound of many running boots echoed from somewhere in the distance within the confines of miles of unadorned metal corridors. The metal was darker than silver with a opalescent sheen that made it clear it also wasn't quite steel. The only other spots of colour were the small blue-tinted windows set into metal doors that lined the corridor. Thin tubes of light trailed along the edges of the ceiling and flat, yellow circular lights flashed down the centre.

And then a shrill voice came on over a loudspeaker:

" _All operators report to your vehicles! I repeat: this is not a drill! All operators report to your vehicles immediately! All crew assume battle-ready positions!"_

More boots echoed down a different corridor and a very sharp ear could detect faint hisses as doors slid open and shut. The steady drum of far-away noise was momentarily accompanied by a whirling, wheezy sonic whine and shortly after broken completely by a creak of metal and a loud crash.

Inside what seemed to be a debriefing room of some sort, Amy Pond climbed out of the TARDIS, hesitating for a moment on the threshold in order to orientate herself after realizing the floor outside wasn't quite where she'd expected it to be. Hopping out, she moved away to leave room for the others to also pile out. She then stared at the long metal table that had bent and twisted under the weight of the TARDIS, leaving the entrance on an angle and facing slightly upwards.

She raised an eyebrow at the Doctor as he, too, climbed out. "You know, I seem to remember you being better at steering the TARDIS," she said. The she paused. "Actually, nevermind, I may have been dreaming that."

Beside her, Rory shrugged. "Maybe the TARDIS is having an off-day," he suggested.

The Doctor glared at both of them before looking back to the TARDIS and making a face at its position. "It's possible that whatever modifications Kang has made to the Time Agency ship has slightly affected the TARDIS' navigational sensors," he allowed.

"You think he modified the ship?" Bill asked.

"Had to have," the Doctor answered. "Time Agency ships are small, most of them being designed to be run by a maximum crew of five. In order to transport a ship this size through time, he would've had to do an entire overhaul of the time engine. I'm actually quite curious to see how he did it."

That said, the Doctor abruptly turned on his heel to face his companions and slipped his sunglasses on his head. "Let's go find out, shall we?" he said with a grin.

"After you, Doctor," said Amy. "Also, what's with the sunglasses?"

"Ah, they're sonic," the Doctor replied. "The newest accessory for the travelling Time Lord! So much more practical than a plain old screwdriver."

"You mean the one you gave to River?" Rory asked quietly.

The Doctor froze. "Yes, the one I gave to River," he said in a soft tone, liberally coated with thinly-veiled grief. "How did you know about that?"

"She came to help us after we arrived back in this century," said Amy. "She had your screwdriver and said you'd given it to her."

"She was off on an expedition to a library," Rory prompted.

"The largest, most complete library in the universe," the Doctor whispered, his voice blank. "It's where I met her for the first time. I still remember the shock on her face when she realized I wasn't kidding, or playing around, that I honestly had no idea who she was." He smiled wistfully. "I sort of envy that version of me. He'd had no idea what he'd lost that day."

Amy gasped as a metaphorical lance unexpectedly pierced her heart and pain blossomed in its wake. Tears welled in her eyes and she reached out her hand, blindly reaching for an anchor. Moments later, she felt her hand grasped in Rory's familiar grip. She looked over and they shared a long look of grief, love and determination.

The moment passed and Amy let his hand go and looked away, walking over to the Doctor. She ignored the uncertain look on his face and embraced him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered as they brought their heads together and their foreheads touched.

"Me too," the Doctor whispered back.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she exhaled and took another. Then she opened her eyes and stepped back to push the glasses up so she could meet the Doctor's eyes.

"Now let's go save the world," she said.

The Doctor smiled. "Good idea, let's go do that!"

And then he led them out of the room.

* * *

The US army troops continued to mill around, watching the sparse UNIT troops suspiciously long after Ross had left. The presence of the US troops on the lawn was an eyesore and Sam couldn't help but worry that Kang's men would eventually notice their presence. UNIT had actually done a pretty good job of taking advantage of their temporary headquarters' parking garage, hiding their troops inside so they weren't visible to overhead sweeps.

He wasn't entirely sure what the building was, but got the impression it was possibly some sort of import-export company that leased the top floor as office space to several other companies. Everyone who worked inside had, apparently, been told to stay out of the office for a few days because Sam hadn't seen so much as a single janitor in the two days they'd been there. The streets around them were also looking unusually deserted, the few cars that had been there earlier having quietly disappeared over the course of the morning.

None of it surprised him overly much as he could easily spot the road blocks where UNIT and US soldiers were quietly turning people around and sending them home.

It wasn't an ideal battleground, but he had to admit it could also be a worse one. The area was an industrial park, full of one to two-story office buildings in between small manufacturing plants. Sure, businesses might loose out on a lot of money if a major fight broke out here, but the threat level to civilians was low and at least it wasn't downtown Manhattan again. The people living there seriously needed a break at this point – insurance premiums were now almost worse than rent in that part of the city.

He flew over the building and noticed the giant silver pods Steve, T'Challa and the couple from the forties (sort of) had gone to the centre of the Earth with had vanished again. There were still a couple of UNIT soldiers standing guard in the area, but the rest of them had dispersed elsewhere.

Sam really wished he knew what was going on, but he and Colonel Rhodes were pretty much their best look-outs at the moment. On one of the rooftops far below, he saw Clint huddled around a radio, no doubt listening in to what was going on in the conference room – Clint hadn't actually told him what he was up to, but between him and Natasha, Sam would've been shocked if at least one of them hadn't bugged the room. Multiple times.

Suddenly, Redwing beeped an alert at him. He'd had it running a basic security sweep pattern a bit further out and higher up than he'd been flying. Sam paused in his flight and looked at the compact display screen on his wrist to pinpoint his drone's exact location and then brought up its camera feed.

"Shit," he cursed under his breath and then tapped his comm. "This is Falcon to UNIT and the Avengers, we've got a giant-ass space/time/whatever ship incoming from the south-east. Based on what Redwing's giving me, I'd say we've got about twenty minutes 'till it reaches us."

There was a long pause on the other end. And then Stark answered: _"Copy that, Falcon. Pull back and don't engage until you have backup. Hawkeye, Black Widow, I'm assuming you've both been listening in so you know what's going on. Both of you get down to the first level of the parking garage. Everyone else, meet us out in front of the building for your instructions. Clear?"_

Down below him, Sam could see Clint hustling to get off the roof and down to the parking garage and wondered just why Stark wanted their sniper below ground. Mentally shrugging, he figured he'd find out soon enough.

* * *

Bill followed behind Amy as quietly as she could, quite aware of how she was barely able to hear Rory creeping down the corridors behind her. The couple had automatically taken positions to put her between them as though to protect her. Part of her chaffed at the insinuation that she needed to be protected, that they considered her the weakest link of their group, but the other part – the one that envied the ease and confidence with which they crept through the spaceship – felt reassured by their presence. Beside them, she felt awkward and gawky, like a teenager. She swore her heartbeats and breathing had to be audible from several corridors away.

Bill hoped that one day she too would feel comfortable creeping through spaceships and talking to aliens. Preferably without getting killed in the process. Or banished to the past.

The Doctor led them with the usual spring in his step – and how he managed to creep about a spaceship with a spring in his step was a mystery. Every once in a while he would pause, press at the top corner of his sonic sunglasses and then turn down a new corridor.

Until they came to a junction where the Doctor suddenly swung around. "Quick, back around the corner!" he whispered urgently and they all turned and ran back to the last turn.

Somehow, Bill found herself right behind the Doctor again as they ducked down and pressed themselves against the cool bulkhead. As she waited with baited breath, Bill could feel the metal faintly humming beneath her cheek. Less than twenty seconds later, they heard hurried boot-falls approaching their position. Two men in green and yellow jumpsuits carrying large cases in their hands and see-through purple canisters full of swirling gas on their backs hurried past them.

They continued to wait in silence until they could no longer hear the men.

The Doctor stood and touched his sonic sunglasses again. Bill heard the familiar soft whirling sound and then the Doctor hummed thoughtfully.

"Hm, Kang seems to take his engineering quite seriously," the Doctor commented softly.

Bill was about to ask the Doctor how he knew that when she suddenly found herself being pushed forward.

"Quick, round the corner, hurry!" she heard Amy hiss in her ear.

Even with no idea what was happening, the urgency Bill could hear in the other woman's voice made her move, practically diving around the corner in her haste. As she rounded the corner, she looked back once and caught a glimpse of a round black dot floating in mid-air several corridor junctions down from them.

Once again, the group waited silently. After a few moments, Rory carefully peeked around the corner. Some of the tension eased from his shoulders.

"It's gone," he said.

"What was it?" Bill asked.

"Security drone," Amy answered.

"Actually, it was more likely a surveillance drone," the Doctor corrected her. "The Moon Colonies used them quite extensively."

Amy looked back to him with a small frown. "What the difference?"

"Surveillance drones are more like mobile security cameras," the Doctor began to explain even as he hurried ahead towards their original goal and Bill, Amy and Rory hurried to keep up. "The Moon Colonies pioneered a drone system that included three types of drones: surveillance drones, analytical drones and security drones. You see, the colonies themselves were large, but not densely populated as their domes had to house all the fields and manufacturing facilities as well as housing. Also, as a result of everything being under a dome, the smallest crack or nick in the dome's structure could become hazardous quite quickly, and since the colonies were mostly self-sufficient, any malfunction in manufacturing equipment or water production, ecetera, could prove equally dangerous. And so their engineers, a rather clever and resourceful bunch, created the drone system."

He paused to, once again, consult his sonic sunglasses and then took a left.

"In any case, the surveillance drones are, essentially a 360 degree camera that takes continuous video as it travels about. The video feed is sent to a central database, where a computer with a rudimentary AI analyses it and if it discovers any anomalies, then dispatches either security or analytical drones as necessary. Analytical drones have more delicate sensors to analyze a problem, assign priority status and suggest solutions that could be passed on to human engineers if they are unable to easily fix it by themselves. Security drones, on the other hand, have a variety of built-in weapons."

"Why not built the drones with all three functions?" Bill asked.

"Lack of resources. Building surveillance drones is relatively simple, but the laser weapons and diagnostic tools require stronger casings, larger power sources and more time, or at least more engineers to build them."

"Hang on," Rory suddenly said. "So you're saying that the surveillance drone might very well have seen us, but it would've moved on regardless because its job is just to take pictures."

"Well, yes."

Bill frowned. "That seems rather inconvenient," she said. "If you have intruders, don't you want the drones to be able to follow them immediately?"

"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "Which is why the surveillance drones aren't usually used on ships."

"But Kang's using them anyway." Bill's frown deepened as she fell silent. That clearly meant something, but she wasn't quite sure what.

The Doctor just shrugged. "Possibly. Or it could be that while he's a brilliant engineer, he doesn't know the first thing about actually running a spaceship."

"And that most of his crew doesn't either," Amy added from behind her.

"Right," said Bill, her frown lightening considerably. "Because otherwise they'd have told him not to bother with surveillance drones! Unless, of course, he didn't have the money for security drones." She paused and then looked at the Doctor. "They do still have money in the future, right? I mean, it's not like Star Trek where they've got those replicators to make them stuff, is it?"

The Doctor just shot her a puzzled look. "I have no idea," he said. "I've never seen Star Trek. But, yes, people do still use money in the future. Except for the colonies on Expartus Prime, silly little colonies that they are. Not silly because they don't use money, just silly because they, well, are. Still, there's some lovely landscape and the buildings are especially unique-looking. It's actually quite a nice place to visit as long as you don't mind snakes. I'll have to take you some time."

"Um, I'm not really a fan of snakes," said Bill carefully. "I mean, I'm not terrified of them or anything, but I just prefer them to be not anywhere near me. Uh, Doctor?"

However, the Doctor was back to ignoring them all as he stepped into a small, rounded alcove. Tapping the corner of his sunglasses, he stared at the wall in front of him as they worked. A few moments later a touchscreen panel appeared on the wall and the Doctor grinned triumphantly. Bill grinned as well, though tension made her smile somewhat strained.

She turned away to watch the corridor, aware that Amy and Rory were doing the same on the other side of the alcove. It could've been maybe thirty seconds, or a minute, later that she heard the Doctor exclaim 'Aha!' softly, followed shortly by a soft hiss. Bill turned to find a doorway had opened up in the previously smooth wall of the alcove.

Well, it was sort of a doorway. It was much narrower than most doorways, being only barely wide enough for the Doctor himself to step through. She frowned as the Doctor reached through the opening instead of just stepping inside... Oh, she realized, there wasn't a room on the other side, but a ladder. It was a service shaft. At least, she assumed it was.

"So, we're not going to engineering?" she asked.

"Too many people there most likely," the Doctor answered her offhandedly. "Besides, I want to get a look at the time machine construction itself."

And then he was climbing down the shaft.

"Well, I guess it's off into the belly of the beast," Rory commented as he cut in front of his wife to go next.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"There's only one person allowed to look up your skirt and that's me," he said with a shrug.

Bill blinked and looked down, realizing Amy was wearing a navy dress she must've brought from the 1940s.

Amy rolled her eyes at her husband. "Honestly, you choose the oddest times to suddenly get jealous," she said, but let him go on ahead of her anyway.

Bill shook her head in amusement and followed behind them.

* * *

Rhodey raised his eyebrows at The Plan. It was crazy, and not in a Tony Stark crazy way, but in an 'are you kidding me' sort of way. Even the chaos of US army and UNIT soldiers rushing around assembling ordinance and driving both equipment and people out of the parking garage, wasn't nearly as insane as their actual plan.

"Tony..." he began, not bothering to hide his skepticism.

Tony raised a hand to stop him. "I know, I know, jellybean," he said. "It's completely insane." He grinned. "Which is why it's brilliant and will probably work... at least for a limited time. You said your replusors did nothing against the floaters, well now you've got me and my spare suit. Maybe between the three of us we can take them. And Natasha's got a rocket launcher. Which is, admittedly, terrifying, but at least she's on our side."

He paused and looked over to Spiderman. "You ready, kid?"

Spiderman nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, sir!"

Rhodey sighed. "Alright, it's not like I've got any better ideas."

"Well, if it fails completely, you can blame it on Captain America," Tony quipped as his faceplate came down. "It was his idea after all."

"If it fails completely we're probably all going to die and then it won't really matter whose crazy idea it was," said Wasp with a snort.

"True enough," said Rhodey with a nod to the newest superhero of their group. Hope Pym was the kind of tough, yet practical sort of lady he could respect, and her costume surprisingly not as flashy as he would've expected from a hero calling herself 'the Wasp'. It was, however, quite obviously designed by the same person who'd designed the Antman suit.

It would be nice to have another flyer in the air.

" _Falcon here. Kang's ship is now about a minute out and I'm seeing floaters disengaging from its docking bay."_

" _Hawkeye here, we're in position and ready."_

" _Captain America here, my team's green for go."_

Rogers jogged up to them and grinned. "Looks like we're all set," he said.

"Then let's get going," said Tony through the voice modulator. "Avengers, assemble and move out!"

Rhodey rolled his eyes as his faceplate closed. To his right, he saw Antman and Wasp shrink down, his suit's external cameras tracking their transformations and adjusting so that he could keep track of them. It was a new feature Tony had developed for their suits after seeing just how much damage an inch-tall man could actually do. Moments later both of them flew off, Antman on an ant and Wasp by her own wing power.

Spiderman, meanwhile, climbed up onto the extra Iron Man suit and held on as it took off. Tony followed right behind them with Rhodey on his tail.

They barely had time to take a breath before the floaters were upon them.

Rhodey dodged the first few laser blasts that came in his direction and then returned fire with a series of repulsor blasts. His repulsors had about as much effect as they'd had at the Avenger's compound. Fed up with being useless, Rhodey armed his shoulder missiles and then fired three at an on-coming floater. Though fast and surprisingly manoeuvrable, the floaters' approach formation was too dense to allow for much movement and so the pilot wasn't able to move out of the way fast enough to avoid the direct hits.

Rhodey saw the shields flicker and immediately followed the rockets up with several repulsor blasts. The first two were enough to take the shields down. The third and forth shot the floater down.

"One down, about a hundred more to go," said Rhodey to himself. "Man, I'm going to run out of ammo soon at this rate."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a huge spiderweb net catch one of the floaters into neat little sack. Then Spider man came swinging around, holding on to the end of the net as he swung beneath the netted floater, pulling it off course and directly into the path of another on-coming floater. The resulting crash took out both their shields.

Rhodey was about to go aim for the second one, when movement on his display showed him Antman flying in with an army of ants... which was carrying a second group of ants on their backs. The second group fell on the floater pilot. Moments later, he saw the floater scream in pain as she batted at the insects – Rhodey would've called them small, but damn those looked like really big ants.

Suddenly, Wasp grew to her normal size next to the floater and fired some sort of energy weapon attached to her wrists at the floater's engine.

Rhodey's proximity alarm went off and he dodged to the left to avoid a blast even as he found himself amused that the Wasp did appear to have some form of stingers after all. Flipping in mid-air, Rhodey aimed another trio of rockets at the floater who appeared to be after him.

"Yeah, I don't think so," he said to himself as he fired the volley. The shields came down and he grinned.

* * *

Spiderman climbed up his webbing and then flipped up onto the back of the netted floater. With the shield gone, the netting had stuck to the pilot and the craft itself. Peter grinned behind his mask and smacked the pilot on the back of his head, knocking him out.

"Consider this a lesson about twenty-first century arachnids!" he quipped. "'Cause I bet no one thought to bring spiders to the Moon when they colonized it." He tapped his comm. "Hey, FRIDAY, wanna come help me tow this one out of the way?"

" _I will be right there, Spiderman,"_ came FRIDAY's cool feminine voice.

It took Mister Stark's AI mere moments to fly the suit to Peter, who immediately jumped on, balancing on the suit's back as though it were a skateboard, while holding on to the end of the web net as FRIDAY flew on towards the temporary UNIT headquarters so they could hand over their hostage.

A rocket firing up from the ground startled Peter and hit a floater that had been coming at him from the left. It was quickly followed up with an explosive arrow. He glanced down to see Black Widow, Hawkeye and Captain America on the ground, though they quickly turned and ran between office buildings as a small pack of floaters took off after them.

"Damn, they're outnumbered," said Spiderman. After barely a moment's hesitation, he quickly tied the end of the web net around the Iron Man suit's arm. "FRIDAY, I'll leave this to you. I'm gonna go help Captain America and the others."

" _Understood, Spiderman."_

Peter jumped off the suit, landing in a tumble on top of a flat rooftop and then sprinted after the three Avengers, well one Avenger and two former Avengers. Man, he wished the buildings around here were taller. Clearly UNIT hadn't had him in mind when they'd chosen the location.

He activated his web shooters and kept them on a steady stream, his finger catching the strands and weaving them to form the net. It grew bigger as he ran, until it was streaming behind him like a really rough-looking sack. He'd practised this particular move for weeks in an abandoned factory, until he could create small nets in seconds and larger nets in under a minute.

By the time he caught up to the Avengers and their tail, his net was finished. He was just in time to see the Black Widow turn around and fire her... wait, energy weapon? Since when did the Black Widow carry an energy weapon? No sooner had it hit then a rocket hit the same floater from the right.

Thoroughly confused, but figuring he'd ask about it later, Peter launched himself into the air and threw his net at a passing floater. Once again, the webbing slipped over the shield with ease. Just as he was considering the best way to ground the floater, a spinning object collided with it from the right, careening the floater off course and into the nearest building.

Peter managed to twist around in mid-air just enough to land on his feet instead of hitting his shoulder against the concrete structure. Looking up, his eyes widened as the spinning object was caught by Captain America as he leaped off the opposite building and landed directly on a shielded floater. He then proceeded to ram his own star-spangled shield against the floater's energy shield.

Looking towards the ground confirmed that, yes, there still was a Captain America running on the ground. Right, he remembered this part. He'd just been expecting there to be some sort of obvious difference between the real thing and the shape-shifting aliens. Maybe if he saw them up close?

Shaking his head, Spiderman looked to the crashed floater. Its shield had gone down – which was weird, but Peter wasn't about to complain about something that made his life easier – and he felt no movement from inside the net. Tying the net off, Peter let the end fall to the ground. He'd let UNIT pick this guy up later.

Jumping nimbly over the damaged wall, Peter ran to catch up with the others again.

* * *

"Fascinating!" the Doctor commented. "You know, Kang is actually quite clever. It seems he's not only integrated the Time Agency's hardware, but also amplified it with a feedback buffer in place to prevent it from going into a loop and exploding. It's a rather rudimentary system, mind you, but certainly not Time Agency design, which means he must have developed it himself."

"And that helps us how?" Rory asked into the ensuing silence.

The Doctor looked up from the console he was studying and blinked at him. "Oh, it doesn't," he said. "It's just fascinating. And somewhat impressive that a thirty-first century man came up with it."

Amy snorted softly. It seemed this Doctor had just as much of a tendency to talk out loud as hers had, only he was more abrupt about it and less chatty. With a sigh, she turned back to her examination of the engine room, though room was a bit of a misnomer. The space felt more like a metal cavern.

It wasn't even a cave system as Amy could distinctly see four walls. The space was well- lit by those same tubes of light they'd seen in the ship's corridors, except here they weren't inlaid in the walls, but rather suspended freely above their heads like party streamers. The large flat circular light fixtures were also present, but they were smaller and, instead of being on the high ceiling, they were inlaid along the floor. It gave the shadows in the room an unnatural-feeling slant.

Cables and pipes ran about a foot above their heads, further adding to the claustrophobic feeling in the otherwise fairly spacious room, helped along by the heat generated by the engine itself. The engine was huge and looked a bit like two elephants huddled together when she squinted. It took up most of the main wall of the cavern, connected to a large console just off to the side, with two smaller consoles on the wall to either side of it, visible only due to the flashing lights on their displays.

The Doctor hadn't paid much attention to the engine itself, other than quickly scanning it and then opening one large hatch on its left side. Amy had barely managed to catch a glimpse of blue and white swirling gases before he'd nodded once in confirmation of something and then closed the hatch, moving on to the next large apparatus. This one was about a third of the size of the engine and looked more like a misshapen drum with large metal tubes and wires sticking out of it.

It was also, apparently, the time machine component of the ship. All Amy could tell was that it looked very different to the insides of the TARDIS.

Bill had hovered around the Doctor for a while before wandering off to take a better look at the engine and its surroundings. Amy was glad to see the young woman looking around. The Doctor was clever, after all, but he didn't have eyes everywhere. She'd watched Bill taking in the spaceship as they'd walked through it, her eyes glancing to the Doctor, or to her and Rory every once in a while for confirmation that she was doing things right.

Amy remembered once being so young and wide-eyed, excited by the idea of going on adventures but terrified by what they might encounter. Oh, who was she kidding, the idea of going on adventures with the Doctor never stopped being exciting. Even now she was torn between hoping the Doctor would ask Rory and her to join him again, once this was all over, and wishing he wouldn't.

She'd had her adventures and now she had a family.

Turning away from the Doctor and his new companion, she joined Rory by another jumble of machinery and metal pipes in the far corner.

"Found anything interesting?" she asked him.

Rory looked thoughtful. "I'm not sure, exactly," he answered. "But I do think this looks rather odd."

Looking to where he'd pointed, Amy immediately saw what had caught his attention. Out of the mass of pipes, tubes and various relays, a half dozen of them seemed to entwine together into a small cluster and then veer off from the rest, directly into the wall behind them.

Amy frowned. "You know, I thought there was something odd about this place," she said and then turned around to take in the engine room.

The two of them had seen the insides of more than a few spaceships and, other than the odd quirk of architecture, most of them had been large spaces with multiple levels that ran through the whole ship. Looking up, Amy could see a few intersecting catwalks high above her head where more pipes and conduits ran alongside them. There was nothing wrong with the image, and being neither a scientist nor an engineer, she couldn't exactly tell whether or not the design was wrong. Still, the conduits above her head seemed rather... lifeless.

She looked back down to the room around them. "Is it odd that there's no one here?" she asked out loud. The Doctor was apparently too far away and too preoccupied with the time machine engine to hear her, but she continued anyway. "I mean, even if there's an actual engineering room, I would've expected there to be at least one person down here to monitor things more closely and to be immediately on hand in case something went wrong."

Behind her, she heard Rory shuffling and then the sound of him tapping his knuckle against the bulkhead.

"Hm... it would make sense," he finally replied a few moments later. "It's also oddly quiet in here for such an enclosed space containing both a ship's engine, all these relays and a time machine engine."

Amy blinked and turned to him. Rory was examining the wall around where the pipping and tubes disappeared. Neither one of them had needed to raise their voices to be heard. The humming of the machinery in the room was noticeable, but other than the occasional high-pitched squeal from a pipe high above their heads, it was easy enough to tune out as background noise.

"You're right," she said. "I can't believe I didn't notice that."

"Been a while since you've been on a spaceship?"

His tone had been nonchalant, but there was a smirk on Rory's lips when he met her eyes.

"It's possible," she replied with a smirk of her own.

The moment of levity was quickly broken by Rory himself: "Do you suppose the Doctor's noticed?" he asked with a sudden worried frown.

"Probably," Amy answered, not feeling entirely certain in her reply.

They both turned to ask him just that.

And then froze.

It took mere seconds for them to realize what was happening and then they were ducking down behind the machinery and piping. On the other side of the room, they could see Bill's tense form as she tugged at the Doctor's jacket to get his attention, her eyes never straying from the menacing red strip of light glowing on the front of the dark grey sphere hovering less than a meter away from her face. Rory barely dared breathed as they waited, wondering whether or not they'd been spotted, and watching for anything resembling an opening, an opportunity to help the Doctor and Bill.

Finally the Doctor turned to face the security drone – because that really was the only thing it could be – and slowly raised his hands in surrender. The top of the drone began to pulse with a small silver light.

"Now, now, no need to do anything hasty," the Doctor said loudly. He paused for a moment, eyeing the drone. "I suppose this is the part where I tell you to take me to your leader?"

A small silver spark shot out from the drone at the floor between their feet. Bill yelped in surprise and jumped away. The Doctor also jumped away from the shot, though he remained silent.

"Was that really necessary?" he demanded of the drone a moment later.

The drone didn't answer, instead floating around so that it was behind them. As Bill and the Doctor turned around the light at the top began pulsing once more. The Doctor grabbed Bill by the arm and slowly the two of them let the drone lead them back towards the wall, where a door suddenly slid open.

Rory and Amy waited in the stillness of the empty room for several, long minutes after the drone had escorted Bill and the Doctor out, carefully watching the shadows around the machines as well as the ceiling for movement. Eventually they concluded there weren't any more security drones waiting to ambush them.

The room felt much more cavernous and creepy now that they were alone, now that danger had managed to find the Doctor. As usual.

"Well, I suppose we'll just have to see what we can figure out without the Doctor," said Amy softly.

Beside her, Rory swallowed and then took a deep breath. "Come on," he said. "Maybe we should see if we can figure out how to get to the other side of that wall."

Amy nodded. It was as good of a place to start as any.

* * *

The Iron Man suit was a work of aerodynamic art and brilliant, cutting-edge engineering. There was no way it should have been possible for it to be out-manoeuvred by a souped-up office chair. And yet Tony found himself having a hard time keeping up with the floaters. The shields weren't helping, as it meant that even when he managed to hit one, his repulsor blasts were bouncing harmlessly off.

Fed up with being ineffective, Tony told FRIDAY to divert power to the chest beam. It was a weapon meant as a last resort but, dammit, he was going to take down at least one of these irritating flying armchair fighters if it was the last thing he did!

" _The chest beam is fully charged, sir,"_ said FRIDAY about forty seconds later.

"Good, then let's do this!" said Tony as the window for the chest beam's targeting system came up on the HUD.

The armour's chestplate had gotten noticeably warmer – not quite enough to be uncomfortable, but enough that when the beam fired out it almost felt like it really was coming out of Tony's chest. He always got the urge to scream out cartoon-style whenever he fired the beam, as though that would make the technology work harder. Usually he managed to refrain from doing so. Usually.

The beam hit one of the floaters dead-on, shattering through the shield and blasting into its mechanism. The hover chair and its driver fell from the sky as a flailing, smouldering wreck.

Tony whooped in triumph. Then he switched on the comm.

"So, good news, my chest beam can take out these flying assholes," he said. He glanced at the suit's power levels and did some quick calculations in his head. "Bad news is I only have enough juice for about twelve more of those."

" _That's better luck than any of us have had,"_ came Clint's voice a few seconds later. The archer sounded understandably frustrated. Even with two Hawkeyes in the field, all they'd accomplished was being a distracting nuisance.

" _Vision, can you get past those shields on the main ship?"_ Cap suddenly asked over the comm.

There was a pause. _"I can try,"_ came Vision's reply.

" _Then do it. We need to know what's going on up on that ship. The Doctor didn't really seem like much of a fighter, and neither are the others. If they're in trouble, they might need your help."_

"Are we even sure they're on the ship?" Tony couldn't help but cut in.

" _Kate said that's probably where they are,"_ Cap replied, though clearly he wasn't happy about not knowing for sure.

"Yeah, it's the 'probably' in that sentence that has me worried. Also, how are you suddenly giving orders to the Avengers? You _left_ the Avengers, remember?"

This time the pause was quite long. As it went past the point of embarrassment and into the realm of flat out ignoring him, Tony frowned and located Cap on the HUD – because regardless of how pissed off Tony was at him, Rogers wasn't the kind of guy to ignore uncomfortable questions. Sure enough, Tony found him surrounded by floaters firing at him from all sides. Huffing in irritation, Tony fired up his repulsors and flew to his aid.

Vision's voice came through on the comm as he flew to assist Captain America: _"Iron Man, should I proceed to the ship?"_

"Yeah, go ahead, Vision. As much as I hate to admit it, Cap's got a point, we need to know what's going on up on that ship." Tony made face. "'Cause not only do I not want to be the one to tell those kids their parents aren't coming home, but if Amy and Rory get hurt I am never getting to hear that 'shoving Hitler into a storage cupboard' story."

 _"Indeed, sir."_

Tony felt the faint hum of moving machinery as his shoulder plates rose and the missiles moved into firing position. Apparently feeling secure in having cornered Captain America, the floaters had stopped zipping around and were mostly hovering stationary as they fired down at him. Rogers was doing an admirable job of dodging most of their shots and deflecting others with his shield, but zooming in, Tony could see blood pouring down his side and a dark burn mark on his upper left thigh. Tony aimed his missiles and fired a full spread at the floaters.

A few of the shields visibly faltered on impact, but most held strong. Except for one floater, whose shield failed completely. Tony didn't hesitate, immediately following the missiles up with a series of repulsor blasts to the ones whose shields had faltered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar spinning shield taking out the floater with the failed shield just like he'd known it would. When it came to situational awareness in the middle of a battle, Cap rarely missed a thing.

Tamping down on the familiar feeling of camaraderie, Tony opened his comm channel. "Iron Man to War Machine," he said even as dodged a blast from one of the floaters who'd previously been firing at Cap. "Rhodey, baby, apparently a direct missile hit followed up by some repulsor blasts is enough to take the down the floaters."

" _War Machine here,"_ came the reply almost immediately. _"Yup, I got that one. Only works on some of them though. Apparently not all their shields are made equal. I've discovered that three missiles will take out most of their shields, but I'm out of missiles now so it's sort of useless information at this point."_

Tony banked sharply to the left and then flipped over in mid-air and shot directly towards the floaters firing at him. The next set of missiles loaded into his shoulder launchers. Well aware that he only had a limited supply of ammo, he waited until he was within seconds of passing the floaters before firing and then flying sharping downwards until he was past the floaters and below them. Then he twisted in mid-air and fired his repulsors at both of them.

One of the floaters exploded. The other was simply knocked off-course with the multitude of impacts.

"Huh," said Tony, still over the comm. "You're right. That's weird. I'm thinking either our pal Kang got gypped by his suppliers or thirty-first century manufacturing ain't what it used to be."

" _Sir, multiple incoming on your left,"_ said FRIDAY calmly.

Tony glimpsed to the left, his eyes widening at the small pack heading right for him.

"Shit," he said even as he fired up his repulsors and flew upwards. Maybe he could lose a few with some fancy flying through tight spaces.

* * *

It was almost entirely by accident that Rory found the tool cabinet. He'd been running his hands along the wall, checking for cracks or unusual bumps that weren't immediately visible in the low lighting of the engine room, when suddenly a panel lit up beneath his fingers. He paused and blinked at it for a few moments: there were two buttons on the panel, one red and one green. Deciding it didn't really get much simpler than that, Rory tapped the green one with his finger.

A rectangular area of the wall – roughly the size of a door – slid out and then to the side, revealing a cupboard full of shelves. Instinctively, Rory knew he'd hit the jackpot.

It turned out, tools in the thirty-first century were still recognizable. There just happened to be a lot of them with parts made out of that same blue glass-like material Kang's visor was made of. They also all folded into small rounded shapes that fit easily into the palm of his hand and magnetically attached to a wide belt.

After spending several minutes examining the tools, Rory shrugged and snapped the belt around his waist, surprised by its lightness. He closed the wall compartment where he'd found them and went back to Amy.

"Found anything?" he asked her.

"No," she said, sounding frustrated. She looked over at him and noticed the belt. "What's that?"

"Thirty-first century tool belt," Rory answered. "Figured it'd fit nicely into my collection, even if they're not actually medical tools. Assuming my father hasn't thrown it away, that is."

Amy snorted. "Your father, throw away something that could potentially be useful one day?"

Rory acknowledged the comment with a tilt of his head. "He could've given it to UNIT."

"That's more likely. Hang on." Amy paused and then stepped away from the wall. "Is it just me, or is this wall panel a slightly darker shade of grey?"

He looked at the panel she was pointing at. "Um, maybe?" he answered, not wanting to admit that it all just looked grey to him.

Then he remembered one of the first tools he'd discovered on the belt. It took him a few trials to find it, but eventually a wide nozzle slid out of the oval-shaped tool in his hand and bright light instantly illuminated the wall.

"Oh," said Amy. "That's handy."

"Hm, but I'm going to have to label them somehow," Rory replied.

Under the light of the flashlight it was much easier to see that Amy was right and part of the metal wall was indeed a slightly darker shade of grey. In fact, a more thorough search using the flashlight revealed that the darker colour covered a square-shaped section of the bulkhead that only reached less than half a meter above their heads.

With nothing better to go on, Rory and Amy tried to pry the darker grey square away from the wall. When none of the tools on Rory's belt seemed to help with that, nothing being fine enough to fit into the none-existent space between the metal panels, they tried pushing at it. It wasn't until Rory pushed against the wall with all his strength and Amy pushed to the left that he finally heard a soft 'click' and the wall he was pushing at abruptly felt less steady.

"Wait, let go," he said as he stepped away from the wall.

Amy also stepped back and then they both watched as the darker grey metal panel slid to the side, leaving a large opening in the wall. They grinned at each other in triumph and then stepped through.

Large overhead lights came on as they stepped into this newly revealed room. It was much smaller than the engine room and even the ceiling was lower, though without the floor lighting, it felt much more inviting. There were more pipes and large tubes running overhead and to their left they could clearly see where the pipes and tubes Rory had first noticed going into the wall came out.

But none of that was the first thing they noticed.

In the middle of the space sat a small space shuttle, clearly not of twenty-first century Earth design. It was about the size of a large truck and was severely dented along one side, its back looking particularly blackened, except for the shiny silver metal that had clearly been used to patch up the worst of it. Rory could barely make out the outline of what he assumed had once been an engine thruster based on its location until the new metal had been smoothed over the wound.

"Okay, that's not what I was expecting to find," Amy commented.

"I assume this is the original time ship," said Rory. "But if he's already got the technology, why would he need this? It's not like it's on display as a memento, it's actually connected to the larger ship."

"Unless he doesn't understand the time travel technology as well as he claims he does."

Rory nodded. It was the only thing that made sense. Dammit, he wished the Doctor were here. They needed someone who understood technology. Rory could fix plumbing and basic electrical wiring, but this was far beyond that.

"Well, let's see if we can get inside," said Amy a moment later.

That, it turned out, was the easiest thing they'd done all day as the ship's doors opened for them automatically and a short set of stairs descended. Not willing to look what few gift horses they found in the mouth, the two of them carefully stepped into the time ship.

The interior design looked somewhat familiar, the stylized blue paintwork on the walls reminding Rory somewhat of parts of New New New New York. The layout was simple enough, a long corridor ran the length of the ship with several small rooms to either side of it. When they stepped in front of one, the door slid open to reveal sparse sleeping quarters: a single cot jutting out of the wall above a desk with a ladder hanging down from it. Rory assumed there had to be a hatch or something like it somewhere to get to the ship's mechanics, but he didn't see it on their short trek to the cockpit.

They stepped into the cockpit and immediately a blue light shone down from above, obviously scanning them.

"Visual scan complete," a smooth, gender-neutral voice announced. "Please confirm your identities."

Rory looked to Amy. The expression on her face seemed to echo his own surprise. A moment passed and then Amy shrugged.

"I'm Amelia Williams-Pond," she said loudly.

"And I'm Rory Williams-Pond," Rory added.

There was nothing more for several seconds and then the voice was back: "Voice recognition complete. Identities confirmed: Amelia and Rory Williams-Pond, born 1987, former companions of the Doctor. Welcome to Ship 1292, the Athena."

Rory's eyes widened as the ship spoke.

"How do you know who we are?" Amy demanded.

"Data has been transferred into my database from remains of twenty-first century records of an organization called the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce."

"Wait, if you can recognize us on sight, then how did Kang not recognize the Doctor?" said Amy with a frown. "Does Kang not have access to your database?"

"Negative. Access is denied to individuals not recognized by my database."

"So Kang must've overridden the controls to the ship..." Rory pointed out.

"Of course he did!" Amy exclaimed. She turned to Rory with an excited look on her face. "Remember, he said that when he found the ship, they'd it to auto-destruct. He would've had to have cut the connection between the automated systems, or at least some of them, and the controls in order to do that. At least I think he would've had to have done that."

Rory shrugged. It made sense to him, but he was hardly an engineer, or a computer programmer.

"Confirm. Ship's navigation and engine controls bypassed by outside source. I have limited access."

"What sort of access do you have?" Rory asked.

While they continued to communicate with the ship's AI, trying to figure out if they could use it to help with their situation, neither one of them heard the figure making its way through the small ship towards them.

* * *

Tony twisted and turned his way through the floaters in the sky and then turned sharply downwards and in between the two nearest office buildings. They weren't, by far, the towering skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan but they were tall enough that Tony could fly within their shadows and still have plenty of clearance from the ground.

On his rear camera, he saw one of the floaters fail to make a turn and crash into the side of a building. He smirked.

Then he had FRIDAY switch to UNIT's comm channel. "UNIT command, this is Iron Man," he said. "I'm heading towards you with a couple bogies on my tail. Don't suppose you've got some anti-aircraft guns handy?"

" _Iron Man, this is Stewart,"_ came the reply before barely a beat had passed. _"I think we can now do better than anti-aircraft guns. Just go ahead and lead them this way."_

Tony raised an eyebrow, but he was getting too close to say much more than: "Well, ready or not, here I come!"

He shot out from between the buildings and flew by the office building they'd been staying in. Even at the speed he was flying, he noticed the layout of the extensive lawn in front of the building had changed drastically. Mostly noticeably, there were a lot more people there than he remembered leaving behind. Even more noticeable were the odd, wide-muzzled weapons many of the newcomers were carrying under their arms.

Also, there was the lack of hair and the green skin. Or rather, Tony guessed, green scales.

As he passed by them, he saw a number of weapons being pointed upwards. Curious, Tony flew up and then turned to watch as the weapons opened fire on the floaters. The suddenly barrage clearly took the floaters by surprise as they faltered with their own attack. It was only a few moments, but those moments were enough time to turn the tides entirely in the favour of the ground force.

Tony whistled in appreciation. "So, I take it the Lizard People have arrived?" he said into the comm.

" _Yes, the Silurian soldiers have arrived,"_ said Kate.

As the Silurians lower their weapons, another large capsule erupted from the ground, the front opening to reveal five more Silurian soldiers inside.

" _Sir, I am picking up seismic activity from the Bay,"_ FRIDAY suddenly announced.

Tony blinked and then reluctantly turned away from the scene below him and flew higher to where he could see into New York Harbour. "Show me," he told FRIDAY and a new screen of data appeared on the HUD. He scanned it quickly. "Huh, okay, that's weird."

He glanced back out at the harbour and then froze as the gently swaying sea water suddenly began to surge and bubble. His eyes widened further and before he'd finished the thought inside his own mind, he was already flying towards the wide clear tube that was coming out of the ocean at an angle. The closer he got, the more he came to realize it really was just as gigantic as it looked: approximately the width of an oil tanker and probably about as as wide.

The remembered words 'airborne division' had barely passed his mind, when a large shape suddenly shot out of the tube. Tony froze. And then the creature spread its long, leathery brown wings and its large pointed beak spread in a high-pitched screech.

All along the harbour, seagulls took flight, scattering to find shelter from the unexpected predator in their midst. Tony's jaw dropped.

One after another, more creatures flew out of the tube, until the New York skyline was resembling a misguided Jurassic Park set – or possibly a futuristic Dinotopia given the saddles and riders on their backs. Except these dinosaurs weren't a CGI effect or any sort of incredibly elaborate puppet. The fluidity of their movements, the way they took to the air and glided effortlessly across the sky as though it were their birthright, none of that could've been faked by a machine.

Somehow, the most surprising thing about all of this was the bright red, blue and green colouring.

"I didn't think dinosaurs were that colourful," Tony said out loud.

" _If I may, sir,"_ FRIDAY interjected. _"Pteranodons are not, in fact, dinosaurs but, are rather classified as flying lizards, or pterosaurs. In addition, while paleontologists have, in fact, very little information on the pigmentation of early prehistoric creatures, I believe that if you take a look at the enhanced images, you will find that most of that colouring appears to be some form of body paint."_

"Huh, learn something new every day," Tony mumbled as he took a look at the images FRIDAY brought up for him. Sure enough, from close up the colours had edges that were a little too blunt to be entirely natural and patterns that looked too much like symbols or pictographs.

Whatever they were, they were beautiful as they glided gracefully through the air and wove around one another like an elaborate winged kaleidoscope.

He opened all the comm channels. "Uh, guys, this is Iron Man here and I think those air divisions have arrived. I just hope none of you are afraid of flying lizards of unusual size."

Hawkeye was the first to respond. _"That depends on what you mean by flying lizards of unu–oh. Holy shit! That's... This is totally the best. Day. Ever."_

" _You mean other than the whole evil villain wanting to take over the world and possibly accidentally destroying it and its timeline?"_ Natasha commented.

" _Obviously."_

" _Oh wow!"_ Rogers pipped up. _"Golly gee, that sure is amazing!"_

Tony rolled his eyes before he realized what he was doing. "Oh for... Cap, I thought we'd finally cured you of that golly geeing crap!"

There was a long pause during which Tony had enough time to wince when he realized how much that sounded like their old banter.

" _Sorry, Tony, guess being back in the forties made me slip back into old habits,"_ said Rogers, the huge smile that had to be on his face clearly audible in his voice.

Tony cleared his throat, suddenly feeling awkward. "Well, this is definitely one habit you should work on, uh, re-breaking."

" _Sir, you have an incoming call from an unknown UK number,"_ FRIDAY suddenly announced.

Tony frowned. "Uh, maybe it's one of Kate's people?" he said, though he couldn't think of a single reason any of them would have to call him directly. He picked up the call anyway. "Hello? Whoever this is, I don't know how you got this number but it'd better be good."

" _Vision gave it to us,"_ came the immediate reply. _"And Rory and I need your help with something."_

Tony blinked in surprise as he recognized the voice. "Amy!" he exclaimed with a grin. "It's good to hear from you. Where are you? And where's the, uh, the Doctor?"

" _We're on Kang's ship. The Doctor and Bill have been captured by the ship's security drones and have been, presumably, taken to see Kang. Meanwhile Rory and I have found something interesting, but neither one of us are scientists or engineers."_

"Well, lucky for you I'm both," said Tony automatically, his attention taken by the pteranodons who'd stopped flying around aimlessly and were now forming groupings in mid-air that was beginning to resemble a strike force instead of a flock. Suddenly, Amy's words registered properly and he frowned. "You don't seem too concerned about the Doctor being captured."

" _The Doctor will be fine. Thinking on his feet is what he does best and chances are he would've gone to see Kang himself anyway. There's no point in us mounting a rescue until we know where we're heading and what's going on here."_

"Uh, fair enough, I guess," said Tony, frankly surprised by the calm in Amy's voice. "So what do you have for me?"

" _We found the original timeship, the one he rescued and got the time travel technology from in the first place."_

Tony's eyes widened. "Wow. He still has that? Actually, scratch that, he has that with him, on board his current, larger ship?"

" _Not only that, but it's actually hooked into the Damocles – that's the name of Kang's ship by the way – systems and it has an onboard AI that he bypassed during his original 'rescue' and has thus never met."_

"Okay, now I have so many questions." Tony paused. "First and foremost being the Damocles? Really? Anyway, FRIDAY, bring up your scans of the ship."

The screen on the HUD reshuffled themselves and the initial readout of Kang's ship moved to front and centre. Tony looked over the information again.

"Amy," he said after a moment. "Can you ask the AI to confirm the Damocles's power levels?"

" _Keep in mind the AI doesn't have full access to its ship's systems because of the way Kang overrode its programming, but I'll see what I can figure out."_

"Good. Also, don't suppose you've seen the engine room?"

" _We have. It's very... large, yet contained if that makes sense. And not as chaotic or as stifling hot as some of the ones we've seen."_

Tony frowned. "Maybe it has really good atmospheric regulators?"

" _Hm, I'll ask."_

Amy pulled away from the phone and Tony could faintly hear her speaking to the AI, its artificial voice obvious with its lack of inflection. But he barely paid attention to their conversation as the Silurian airborne division chose that moment to join the fight, swooping into action with a sudden ferocity that caused goosebumps to spring up along his arms and a chill to rise up his spine. The floaters scattered beneath their initial onslaught and weren't given time to regroup before the first laser blasts began to pepper them both from the ground as well as from the air.

Tony grinned and fired up his repulsors to join the fray, hearing Rhodey whooping with delight somewhere on the other end of the comms.

* * *

The closer they got to the bridge, the more people they came across, hurrying through the corridors with purpose. Most of them were so intent on whatever their destination happened to be that they barely gave more than a glance at the two strangers being herded towards the bridge by the security drone. All of this was to be expected, of course, but still...

"I know I haven't exactly been on a whole lot of spaceships," Bill suddenly pipped up as they stepped into yet another elevator. "But I would've expected a lot more people even if they are all at battle stations or whatever."

"And you'd be absolutely right about that, Bill," said the Doctor, pleased that his newest companion was so quick on the uptake. Of course, most of his companions were bright young people; it was why he took them with him, after all. "For a ship this size, and an intended invasion force no less, there's really only about a third of the crew size I'd have expected."

Bill frowned. "And what does that mean?"

"Hm, you know I'm not entirely sure yet. There's a few things I've seen here so far that aren't quite adding up. Hopefully talking to Kang will help me figure it all out."

"So, you knew the drone was going to find us and you let yourself get caught then?"

The hopefulness in Bill's voice made the Doctor cringe.

"Well, no, not exactly," he admitted reluctantly. "I was rather hoping to have a bit more time to look around and get my bearings before going to see our soon-to-be host. The security drone was unexpected, though certainly not surprising."

"So, what about–"

"–And now we'll just have to make the most of the situation we're in and hope that _others_ can figure out what we've missed."

He glanced to the side, reassured to see Bill had taken his rather unsubtle hint about not mentioning Amy and Rory by name. Certainly, as far as he knew the security drones' AI weren't complex enough for basic reasoning, but that didn't mean these didn't have some form of recording device installed. While he didn't necessarily believe that either Amy or Rory had the abilities to override any of the ship's systems, he remembered them both being quite resourceful and the longer they could go undetected, the better.

The elevator doors opened into a small antechamber, the walls made from a slightly lighter shade of grey than the previous corridors they'd seen. When they stepped out of elevator, a set of double doors across from them slid open.

They walked into a room that looked down-right cozy compared to the rest of the ship. For one, the walls had actually been painted a warm chocolate brown and the floor featured a soft, peach-coloured carpet. There were paintings on the walls of planetary formations and one or two the Doctor recognized as being landscapes of the various Moon colonies. And in the centre of the room, made from actual wood, stood a large desk.

Kang stared at them from behind the desk, his eyes hard and expression unreadable. He didn't bother getting up.

"Ah, hello there, Kang," the Doctor immediately greeted with a cheerful smile. "I thought it was about time we met in person. It's a lovely ship you've got here. A bit empty, I think, though I'm hardly an expert on lunar spaceship manufacturing."

Kang sat in silence for several long moments. "You are beginning to become quite the nuisance, Doctor," he said eventually.

"Oh, well, if I'm only just _beginning_ to be a nuisance then I've still got quite a ways to go yet."

Anyone with lesser powers of observation probably would've missed how Kang's left hand twitched.

"How did you get aboard my ship?" Kang asked calmly.

The Doctor smirked. "I'm a Time Lord, I can get anywhere within space and time." He paused thoughtfully. "And possibly a few places beyond time and space as well, though granted those usually only happen by accident."

Kang's jaw tightened and his hand clenched into a tight fist.

"I will figure it out on my own then. And what, exactly is your purpose here? Did you come to stop me? All on your own with your... primitive twenty-first century human companion?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed as he pushed aside the anger he felt surging forward in his mind. Beside him, he felt Bill stiffen, but she remained silent. Good girl, he thought, clever enough to know they'd gain nothing by showing Kang their indignation and even less by giving in to their anger.

"You're a fool, Kang, if you're so eager to underestimate them," he said evenly instead. "And, yes, I did come here to stop you. Which I will. The only question you need to consider is whether you'll leave quietly and of your own accord or whether you'll be forced to leave by those who won't hesitate to hold you accountable for your actions in a court of law."

Kang blinked in surprise, and then he chuckled, his eyes gleaming with amusement. "Doctor, do you seriously believe that anyone on this planet has the power to take me down and, well, _arrest me_ I suppose?"

"On this planet, no. However there are several organizations not of this planet whose edicts you are clearly violating and every single one of them have that power. Not that I necessarily need them, mind you, but you should be aware of their existence."

"By the time the Time Agency becomes aware of what's happening, they will no longer be in a position to do anything, Doctor. Mostly due to no longer existing."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at Kang. "Ah, so you are aware of the changes to the timeline your actions will cause."

"Naturally. They will, however, be changes for the better."

"That's not for you to decide."

"And for who is it to decide then? You?"

Sighing, the Doctor shook his head. He really was sick of people assuming he was an egoist. True, he was much smarter and with eons-worth more experience than just about anyone else alive, but he didn't think he was all-knowing, nor did he believe everything was about him. Even if it often ended up being about him.

"It's not about deciding what's right or wrong, it's about deciding upon a path that won't lead to the destruction of the world," he said calmly. "Which is what your actions will result in. Yes, the twenty-first century will be a rocky one, in many ways moreso than any other period of time before or after it, but how the human race deals with those waves that are about to come their way will shape your species for the rest of its history."

"You mean shape them into cowards that give into what they perceive to be inevitable and run away?" said Kang, not bothering to hide the derision in his voice. His fist was shaking.

The Doctor cocked his head. "Is that what you think happened?"

Kang's fist slammed into the table, his eyes finally showing emotion. "Of course that's what happened!"

The Doctor let the silence in the office stretch as he considered whether or not to tell Kang the truth. There was no purpose to telling him, the people involved were long dead (and hadn't yet been born... time travel was complicated) and past caring what Kang thought of them. He certainly didn't owe Kang the truth, however there was also no advantage to letting him remain ignorant.

Besides, the more time he bought the others, the better.

"History is an interesting creature," the Doctor finally said, his voice soft. "She is set in stone, and yet fickle, a story full of half-told truths, misleading anecdotes and forgotten moments. To put it bluntly, history is a story told by a man who's half-blind and half-deaf and was only really there for about a third of it and heard the rest second-hand from about twelve other people, some of whom may or may not have had an agenda."

Bill snorted. "That's a very fancy way of saying that history is full of inaccuracies and lies," she stated dryly.

He shrugged, not at all bothered by being caught out. "Yes, but my way sounds less boring and cliched."

When he looked back to Kang, the man was looking thoughtful. "Are you saying, Doctor, that there is more to the story than is widely known?"

The Doctor nodded. "The evacuation of the planet wasn't intended to be permanent. Or, at least, they'd hoped it wouldn't be. For decades before the evacuation had begun, an international group of scientists had been working on a solution, a way to fix the planet's atmosphere. They finally had a break-through and invented a sort of partial terraforming process. It wouldn't have fixed everything, but it was supposed to clean up the atmosphere, and then slowly clean up the water using the Earth's natural hydrologic cycle over the course of approximately two years. Humans would then have to take it from there."

Kang looked stunned for a moment, but the expression was quickly replaced by a skeptical frown. "That sounds like a remarkable achievement. Why was it not implemented?"

"Oh, it was." The Doctor allowed himself a bitter chuckle. "Surely you can guess why you've never heard of it?"

"Because it failed."

He looked over to Bill, who was staring at him with wide, horrified eyes.

"That's it isn't it? Those scientists, they were trying to save the planet but they failed, didn't they?"

He nodded. "The problem was that there was no way to test the process. Finding another planet with the exact atmospheric conditions and pollution levels as Earth was impossible. And, yes, six months after initializing the process, those scientists realized they'd not only failed, but their attempt at fixing the planet was actually making Earth's atmosphere worse."

Kang opened his mouth to speak when he was interrupted by a low beep. Frowning, he tapped a small button on the inside of his left wrist. A small green light came on just below his right ear.

"Yes, what is it?" Kang demanded. He paused, obviously listening to someone on the other end of his communicator. Suddenly his eyes widened. "What?!" He grit his teeth and glared at the Doctor. "I'll be right there."

The Doctor grinned. Based on what Amy had told him about the overall situation, as she understood it, he could hazard a guess as to what was going on. A few guesses, in fact, one of which was bound to be right.

"Aah, speaking of the inconsistent annuls of history," he said.

Kang stood abruptly. "You still think these humans have a chance," he said. "Very well. Then I invite you to personally watch as my forces decimate those of this primitive world."

"Oh I think it might already be a bit too late for that," said the Doctor under his breath.

If Kang heard his words, he chose to ignore them as he swept out of the room through a second door, his dark blue cloak billowing behind him. The Doctor grinned as he took his Raybans out of his jacket pocket and slipped them on.

Suddenly a spark of white electricity flew into the carpet between him and Bill. They jumped slightly. Then the Doctor turned to glare at the security drone hovering behind them.

"No need to get testy," he told it. "It's not like I don't _want_ to follow. In fact, I wouldn't miss this for the world!"

And then he and Bill strode onto the bridge. It wasn't the most impressive he'd ever seen, but it looked serviceable. At the front was a window overlooking the city far below them, where the Avengers and UNIT were fighting Kang's floating soldiers.

The Doctor blinked. Those were hover platforms. True, they looked like they'd been retrofitted and upgraded, but still. Hover platforms were used for maintenance work and crop dusting in the Moon Colonies. He frowned. A picture was beginning to form in his mind. He didn't quite have all the pieces just yet, but there was almost an outline now.

A large hologram screen appeared in the centre of the bridge, just in front of Kang's chair – more appropriately described as a throne. A haggard-looking blonde woman was on the screen, looking somewhat panicked.

"Kang, I don't know what's going on," she immediately said. "Spinner's ship is firing on us! Our shields aren't responding and we're taking heavy damage."

As the image shook, the Doctor casually touched the side of his Raybans and turned on their scanners. It took his sonic sunglasses less than a minute to scan the transmission's signal. It was coming from London. He smirked slightly. Kang might've thought he'd done a thorough enough job of researching the twenty-first century, but clearly he'd been wrong. After all, history was an account of things that had been written down.

Torchwood had gone to great lengths to make sure their part in history remained unwritten, and Jack Harkness doubly so.

The Doctor carefully fiddled with the settings on his Raybans. Out of the corner of his eyes, he was aware of the holoscreen blinking out of existence. Kang whirled on him.

"Doctor, what is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

"The meaning of what?" he asked innocently. Settings programmed, he casually removed his sunglasses and placed them on the console to his right. "Oh, you mean that thing with those ships in, I believe it was, London airspace?"

Kang nodded, not sounding at all impressed by the Doctor's attempts at levity.

"Oh, that's just Jack. And probably Martha and Mickey, but mostly Jack. You wouldn't have heard of him, he likes to keep a mostly low profile. He was born in the fifty-first century on the Bo Peninnsula, made a big splash in the community when he got accepted into the Time Academy. Then he got stuck on Earth in the twentieth century, where my companion Rose and I ran into him. He's been around on and off ever since. It's a very long story and I'm sure you're not interested in the details."

For the first time since their entire encounter had begun, Kang looked truly speechless.

And then Bill gasped.

"Oh my God!" she said, her voice sounding oddly awed. "Doctor, is that...?"

The Doctor looked to her and then followed her finger to where she was pointing towards the front window. He froze.

"Are those dinosaurs?" Bill asked. "Honest to God, bloody dinosaurs?"

"That must be the Silurian air divisions," he said absently.

One of these days, he was going to have to visit the Silurian Empire at the height of its power, the Doctor decided. In fact, given all his encounters with them it was rather surprising he hadn't done so yet.

"This is ridiculous!" Kang screamed. Then he pointed at one of the men sitting at a long console. "Contact Captain Westland and tell him he's to go to London to help Silvers. Then tell Dominique he's being recalled to New York."

"Yes, sir," said the man and immediately turned to his task.

The Doctor frowned at the orders. Then he made a slight show of looking for his glasses so that he could then 'find' them on top of the console and slide them back on. Part of his mind added this new oddity to the puzzle even as the rest of it took in the information his glasses had managed to gather.

"Ah, Doctor, so much suddenly makes sense!" Kang suddenly declared.

The Doctor blinked. "Oh, it does?" he asked.

Kang was looking down at a small holographic read-out being projected from the band on his left wrist. He was smiling maliciously. "You were stalling for time, hoping to distract me with your fairy tales so that I wouldn't notice your accomplices. Unfortunately for you, they've been found by my security drones and all three of them are on their way here as we speak."

The Doctor fought very hard to keep a straight face and, most importantly, not to let his confusion show. Three? How were there three of them? Had someone managed to sneak aboard the TARDIS when he wasn't looking?

With one, last triumphant smirk, Kang turned his attention away from the Doctor and back to the battlefield below them. The Doctor glanced back at the readings being displayed on the lenses of his sunglasses. Deep in the tangle of various system codes and signals, a rather familiar signal caught his attention. Now that he'd found it, he tapped his glasses setting them to follow the it to its end. The result was interesting to say the least.

A quick look to confirm Kang was still distracted elsewhere – he was asking about how many world leaders had surrendered themselves to him or some other such rubbish – the Doctor quickly programmed a new set of parameters into the sonic sunglasses.

"You know, even if the world leaders have surrendered themselves to you, that doesn't necessarily mean their people have," said the Doctor loudly. He slipped the sunglasses off and held them in his hand as he gestured. "There will always be enough people to oppose you and your rule. What exactly do you plan to do, destroy every country whose people offer resistance?"

"Wouldn't that just do more damage to the environment?" Bill asked.

Mentally congratulating Bill for her excellent timing, he pointed in her direction with the sunglasses as he took a few steps backwards. "An excellent point, Bill! That sort of destruction most certainly would cause quite a bit of environmental damage. And would only cause more people to turn against you."

"The destruction caused would be negligible and easily corrected with the technology I have at my disposal," said Kang with a dismissive wave.

The Doctor strode forward and leaned over a console, resting the hand holding his Raybans against it as he faced Kang. "Are you sure? Are you absolutely certain you could reverse the damage?"

"I will prove that I can!" Kang smirked. "As predicted, there are quite a few world leaders unwilling to surrender. I expected as much. I am an unknown player, after all, and not everyone would be willing to actually go through with mass murder. I had intended to use Washington, London and Moscow as examples, however I have now changed my mind. New York and the Avengers have proven to be far more irritating than I'd anticipated. And so my first target shall be New York instead. I believe a death toll of twenty million should be enough to prove my sincerity."

Feeling his glasses vibrate ever so slightly beneath his fingers, signalling the completion of their task, the Doctor stepped back and put them on again. He kept his expression blank as Raybans showed him their link to the systems in Kang's ship. Or at least one specific system of Kang's ship.

"Then why haven't you?" Bill suddenly asked.

Kang looked at her, his sharp eyes staring out at her from behind his blue visor.

Bill swallowed at the scrutiny. "I mean, the Avengers haven't done what you wanted them to do, have they? They haven't surrendered and now they're even openly fighting you, so why haven't you just destroyed New York yet?"

"You know, Bill," the Doctor said, his thoughts rapidly cycling through possibilities as he touched his glasses to bring up schematics of the ship, trying to figure out what exactly was wrong with the picture they were showing him. "You are a treasure trove of good questions today."

"The time has not yet been right," said Kang imperiously. "I am, after all a man of my word and a deadline is a deadline."

A few things suddenly slotted into place. The Doctor couldn't help the grin that stole across his face.

Kang frowned. "You think this is amusing?" he said. "You are my prisoner. Your companions are my prisoners and neither the US military, UNIT, nor the Avengers can defeat my forces. You have lost, Doctor!"

"Oh, I very much doubt that," said the Doctor.

And then the door behind them slid open, admitting Amy, Rory and some odd-looking man with reddish-purple skin and a yellow jewel stuck in the middle of his forehead. The Doctor had a vague recollection of having seen him out of the corner of his eyes in the conference room as he'd been heading out to the TARDIS. One of the Avengers, most likely. They were followed by another dark grey security drone.

But what immediately caught the Doctor's attention was that neither one of the three looked defeated or frustrated. They stepped into the room as though there wasn't a security drone that fired lasers dogging their steps.

And then Amy met his eyes and smiled at him. "Hello, Doctor," she said.

"Oh, hello there Amy, Rory, odd reddish-skinned man in a yellow cape I don't know," he said with a sly smile of his own. "So, Kang here says he's going to destroy New York."

Amy snorted. "Not likely," she said.

"According to Tony, he's going to need a bit more power than what he's carrying for that," Rory added. "Not to mention actual weapons."

The Doctor smirked. "I suspected as much."

He turned to Kang. "To use a quaint Earth phrase: the jig is up," he told him. "I'm calling your bluff, Kang. You want to destroy New York? Go ahead then, do it. I'll even promise not to try and stop you, just this once. It's a limited time offer, just for you."

A new emotion flashed through Kang's eyes. It was quickly covered up by anger, but not quickly enough for the Doctor to not recognize it: fear.

"Security drones, alpha sixty-three gamma override!" Kang barked out the order. "Kill the intruders!"

The Doctor's eyes widened. Standard security drones weren't supposed to be powerful enough to fire lasers of lethal capacity! He whirled around even as he cursed his own carelessness at not scanning them for modifications.

Sure enough the top of the drones' casings were pulsing with red light.

"Doctor?" Bill said, fear and uncertainty in her voice.

"Bill, get behind me," he said as he reached out for her.

And then a beam of yellow light hit the drone. Energy sizzled around it for a moment before it dropped to the ground like a very round stone. The Doctor blinked and then glanced over to the others... in time to see the unknown man shoot another yellow energy beam at the second drone from the jewel in his forehead.

"Huh," he said. "Well, that's handy."

Then he turned back to Kang, who looked absolutely furious.

"You're a phony, Kang," he began. "This giant spaceship is nothing but a very elaborate ruse. New York was never really your target, was it? You simply used the Avengers as an excuse to keep the ship stationary above the city, never expecting they'd be a real threat."

"It's also why you were so quick to attack them," Amy added, stepping forward. "And not just once, but twice, three times if you count this attack now. You wanted them injured, demoralized. Maybe that's even why you sent Steve, the man you probably thought was their leader, to the past. Did your sensors really detect some sort of time anomaly or did you make that up?"

"Hm, another good question," the Doctor acknowledged. "And, really, don't bother trying to threaten the city again. I know you're recalling one of your other ships from Washington, but if those are what I suspect they are, then by my calculations it'll take it approximately one hour and, oh, about sixteen or so minutes to get here."

He snorted. "Kang the Conqueror indeed. What exactly did you conquer? One or two of the Moon Colonies? It explains everything, the modified tech everywhere, the security drones, the lack of personnel, the lack of hand weapons, the low energy readings from the ship... All this ship is, is an empty shell housing some basic propulsion and the modified time machine! What was the plan, exactly? Were you really planning to just intimidate the world into surrendering? Well, I commend you for attempting something so daring, but if you've actually studied human history then you should know that sort of bluff almost never works."

Kang was practically shaking with fury now, but the Doctor knew it was an impotent fury. His best weapons gone, his ruse discovered, he had no cards left up his sleeve.

"I believe there's another quaint Earth expression that is appropriate now," the Doctor said as he once more reached for his sonic Raybans and activated the program he'd set earlier.

"It's game over, man."


	12. Part Eleven

Hawkeye lined up an explosive arrow with his target.

"Twenty feet up above the red brick, third in," his said under his breath.

" _Got him,"_ his own voice confirmed over the comms. _"On three."_

He counted down to zero in his head. His target zipped to the side and he immediately shifted his aim. At zero, he fired his arrow. It hit his target at the exact same time as its doppelganger hit the target from the opposite side, both exploding at once. The floater's shields flickered. Moments later, a laser cannon from the ground also hit the target, taking the shields down completely.

A repulsor blast from War Machine took the floater down permanently.

Hawkeye grinned. Having a shapeshifting alien who could not only take on your appearance, but also your abilities and thought patterns, as your fighting-buddy was _awesome_ – now that they'd figured out how to make it work.

Seriously, if signing the Sokovia Accords meant being able to work with UNIT, then he was already considering talking to Cap about re-thinking their position on the whole thing. And based on how excited Cap got about the lizard people, he had a feeling it wouldn't really be that hard a sell.

Hawkeye was already lining up his next shot when the world suddenly got a lot brighter. Frowning, he looked up. And blinked at the fluffy white clouds gently sailing across the blue sky. The conspicuously empty blue sky.

He switched his comm to the general channel. "Uh, guys, this is Hawkeye here. Where did the giant spaceship go?"

Tony's reply came only seconds later: " _That's a very good question, Hawkeye. And I'd be only happy to explain it, if I had any idea whatsoever what the answer was."_

" _Spiderman, here. I was, uh, looking up at the sky while I was swinging and it just, like, vanished. It was there one moment and then the next, bam, it was gone. Only without the actual sound effect. Obviously."_

" _Well, I think we can definitely assume it wasn't voluntary, seeing as how all the floaters are still around and looking really confused,"_ the Falcon chimed in.

Hawkeye glanced at the floaters. Sure enough, they'd paused in their shooting in favour of hovering staring up at where their ship used to be. Some of them were speaking or waving their arms and gesturing at the empty sky.

" _Can we assume this is the work of the all-mysterious Doctor?"_ Natasha asked.

Moments later, a rocket hit one of the remaining floaters – Natasha clearly had no sympathy for their plight. Of course, the hit was quickly followed up by twin shots from laser canons, so clearly neither did the Silurians.

" _Hey, it could've been Vision!"_ Tony protested.

Clint rolled his eyes as he looked for his next target.

" _Speaking of which,"_ said Cap. _"Antman, Wasp, I guess we don't need you to save your growing powers for the ship anymore."_

There was a pause, and then Clint heard Antman's voice on the comm: _"Got it, Cap. Wasp's actually got a pretty good idea for that. Stand by."_

An explosive arrow hit a floater two down from where he'd been aiming. Hawkeye immediately compensated and fired at that same floater. The vehicle floundered in mid-air as it was rocked by the blasts. A laser blast hit it from above, taking down its shield and pitching it forward. Clint saw its driver scrambling to gain control.

Until a Pteranodon swooped in and plucked the floater out of the sky.

Clint whistled appreciatively.

His attention was, however, immediately taken up by the two figures who suddenly began to sprout out from the ground. Somewhere on the other side of the comms, he heard several startled cries and grinned.

" _Hey, I remember this one!"_ Spiderman exclaimed, sounding entirely too excited by it.

Several of the Pteranodons loudly protested the sudden appearance of two gigantic humans, stopping mid-flight to hover and screech angrily at Antman and Wasp.

" _Aw, hey, they're actually kinda adorable from this angle,"_ said Antman as he carefully reached out towards the nearest flying dinosaur.

Wasp slapped him on the shoulder. _"They've also most likely got the beak strength to break your finger!"_

Antman immediately withdrew his reaching hand and Clint chuckled. The Wasp was a great addition to the team and he really hoped she stayed. He was pretty sure Nat was hoping for the same.

" _Wasp to all flyers! Get out of the area or brace for turbulence."_

She turned her back on the battlefield and the floaters, who had apparently recovered from the succession of shocking events and were now back to firing back at their enemies. A couple of the shots hit Antman and he hissed in pain before hitting the nearest floater with the gigantic crowbar he was holding. Wasp's wings began to flutter, slowly at first, but they quickly picked up speed, raising her off the ground, but only enough to take her up to the floater's height.

Clint flattened himself further against the rooftop so as not to be blown away. When he glanced upwards, he saw the floaters weren't dealing with the turbulence very well – apparently the Moon didn't get much wind, because the pilots didn't seem to quite know what to do with it. The Pteranodons didn't seem to be having that issue and they eagerly swooped down to peck at their failing shields.

It was difficult to tell which one of them started it, or whether it had even started with just one and instead been a collective decision. If the floaters were communicating with each other, neither UNIT nor Stark had been able to detect the frequency they were using. All of a sudden, the floaters just seemed to stop fighting and, instead, dropped to the ground like very high-tech, albeit slow-moving, stones.

Clint fought against the wind as he crawled just a bit further to the edge of his rooftop for a better view of the ground. He relaxed when he noticed the floaters stepping out of their crafts, their arms up in a fairly universal gesture of surrender.

"Hawkeye here," he said into the comm. "I think you can stop now, Wasp."

" _Got it, Hawkeye. Thanks."_

The Wasp's wings immediately began to slow down, lowering her to the ground.

Cap's voice came on over the comm a few minutes later: _"Falcon, Iron Man, War Machine, is that all of them? Can you tell if there are any stragglers anywhere?"_

" _War Machine here. Nope, I'm not seeing anything, Cap."_

" _FRIDAY's not picking anything up either. I think we've got all of them. Also, again with you giving orders!"_

" _Falcon here, I'm seeing floater-free skies. And, to be fair, Iron Man, you did follow them."_

Iron Man didn't respond to the statement, but Clint could feel his glare over the comm link. He chuckled as he moved his position a few meters and shifted his stance in order to get a better overview of the ground. Notching an arrow, he aimed it towards the surrendering floaters and settled in to observe and be ready to react if any of them decided to try something.

* * *

Steve shook his head in amusement at Iron Man's silence even as he paused to take several deep breaths. The laser burn across his right thigh felt like there was a hot iron pressed against his flesh and the one on his arm wasn't exactly doing much better. He was also fairly certain he had at least one cracked rib and possibly a fractured collarbone. And there was blood crusting the side of his uniform, though he wasn't quite sure when he'd gotten hurt there.

All in all, he'd felt better, though he'd also certainly felt worse.

He'd lost sight of his Zygon twin somewhere in the chaos – he wasn't even entirely certain the Zygon hadn't just reverted back to his former UNIT soldier appearance which would explain why he wasn't seeing a carbon copy of his bright blue uniform on the battlefield. Now that the attack had, at least on their end, been averted, he also wasn't quite sure where his rogue Avengers team stood with UNIT, though he was confidant in his assessment of Kate Stewart that she wouldn't start hunting them right away.

In his apology message to Tony, Steve had told him he believed in people. Kate Stewart... she was possibly a person he might just be willing to believe in. It was something to consider at the very least.

Momentary break over, Steve carefully slung his shield onto his back and then braced himself for the pain before limping his way towards where the floaters were now surrendering to a combined UNIT, US Army, Silurian and Avengers fighting force. A shadow passed overhead and he looked up, watching with awe as a Pteranodon flew gracefully by.

He wished he could share this moment with Bucky.

Suddenly a strange whirring, wheezing mechanical sound made him pause and turn. He blinked in a surreal sort of surprise as a nostalgically familiar-looking blue rectangular shape phased in and out of existence several feet away from him, until finally settling into a solid form.

Steve tapped his comm. "This is Captain America," he said, feeling bemused more than anything. It had been one of those weeks. "I don't suppose the Doctor's ship looks like a 1940s police box from London?"

" _A 1940s police box?! Seriously, Cap, I think you might–"_

"– _Yes, that's his TARDIS, Captain. Hang on, I'm on my way to you. Make sure he doesn't leave before I get there!"_

There was a stunned pause on the other end. Moments later, Iron Man landed a few feet away from him. His faceplate came up, revealing Tony's incredulous-looking face.

"Okay, that definitely wasn't there earlier," he said. "Aaand I have so many questions right now. So many _more_ questions. Beginning with just how un-aerodynamic that looks, and as a genius who builds things that fly, I'm sort of an expert on that. I mean, who wakes up one morning and decides that an old fashioned police box is a great design for a time machine or spaceship or whatever?"

"Must be pretty cramped with all of them inside too," Steve pointed out.

"Yeah, that too."

Which was when Kate reached them. "It's bigger on the inside," she told them. "In fact I have on fairly good authority there's a library and a full Olympic-size swimming pool somewhere inside its many long and confusing corridors."

"What?!" Tony exclaimed, his mouth gaping comically.

Which was when the time machine's door opened and Amy and Rory stepped out, followed by Vision, Bill, and finally the Doctor himself. Vision was looking slightly stunned, in his own stoic way and Steve couldn't wait to hear his story of what happened.

"Ah, Kate, you're here, excellent!" the Doctor exclaimed, pushing past the others in order to get to her. "I've left Kang and his ship in the mostly-gentle hands of the Time Agency. They're not a bad lot, but their sense of humour's a bit twisted and they don't take kindly to having their technology misappropriated by unsanctioned parties. Needless to say, they were quite happy to have it returned to them. Now, I believe they'll be coordinating with the Shadow Proclamation who will most likely be coming to round up the rest of Kang's men."

"Wonderful," Kate said dryly. "I do so love dealing with the Judoon."

"What'll happen to Kang and his men?" Steve asked.

"Hm? Oh, they'll most likely be returned back to their original time and place, only their memories of these events erased."

Steve frowned. "Will they be harmed by it?"

"What?" The Doctor blinked in surprise. "Oh no, the Time Agency has the ability to carefully target specific memories. It's entirely possible they'll return Kang back home with all his memories except for anything to do with how the time ship worked. Or maybe he won't remember any of this at all, either way, I assure you it's an entirely painless procedure."

Amy cleared her throat and then looked at the Doctor pointedly. "Doctor, the ship?"

The Doctor blinked at her. Then his eyes widened in understanding and he looked back to Kate. "Oh, yes, of course. Just before I sent Kang's ship back to the future, he'd ordered one of those smaller ships of his to head to New York as backup."

Kate nodded. "Yes, I already know about that one," she said. "The US Armed Forces are engaging it as we speak. Apparently its captain isn't the smartest tool from the thirty-first century shed and left Washington in a way that put him directly into the path of the battle squadrons already on their way to engage it. The general I spoke to mentioned something about having dusted off some sort of Hulk-buster weaponry..."

"Ah, excellent! Good, good. That's, well, I'd say that's about it. It's been a blast, but I must dash, teaching a class in the morning and all."

"Doctor," said Amy forcefully. "Don't forget you have to take us back twenty years so that Rory and I can negotiate General Larrsa's help."

The Doctor made a face. "Yes, I suppose I do have to do that. I'll drop you back off after. Vision, it was good to meet you. Good-bye Kate... and everyone else. Come along, Bill, let's be off."

Amy crossed her arms. "Doctor, I have had less than two hours of sleep in the past forty-eight hours. I am not heading off to negotiate with a Silurian general until I've had _at least_ eight hours of sleep!"

"You have a bed in the TARDIS," the Doctor pointed out weakly.

Rory's eyes suddenly widened. "You know what we also have in the TARDIS?" he said, looking at his wife.

"Clothes!" they both said in unison.

"Oh god, I can't wait to put on something else!" said Amy as she hurried back towards the TARDIS, Rory at her heels. "I wonder if they still fit."

The Doctor threw his arms up. "Alright, fine, I'll stay for a bit longer! But I'll let you explain to Nardole why I'm late tomorrow morning."

"I thought that thing was a time machine?" said Tony.

"Well, yes, but it's the principle of the matter," said the Doctor with a disgruntled frown.

Bill grabbed the Doctor by the arm. "So, Doctor," she said with a grin. "What do you suppose is the chance that I could get a closer look at those pteradactyls?"

"They're pteranodons," Tony corrected.

"What's the difference?" she asked him.

Tony shrugged, or at least the slight movement of his shoulders looked like it was supposed to be a shrug. "These ones are bigger, apparently."

The Doctor looked down at Bill. "Well, I suppose we could go ask the Silurians," he said.

Steve perked up. "Gee, you think they might let us, uh, touch them?" he asked.

"I honestly have no idea, but doesn't hurt to ask, I suppose."

Beside him, he saw Tony debating whether he wanted to try and break into the TARDIS or see the flying dinosaurs closer up. Eventually, Amy and Rory walked out of the ship, now looking much more like the modern citizens of Earth that they were, and his mind was apparently made for him.

Instead, Tony went up to Vision and threw an arm around his shoulders. "So, Vision, you went to the future," he said with an excited grin. "What was it like?"

* * *

Amy's limbs felt heavy and her eyes burned from lack of sleep. And yet she walked out of the TARDIS feeling lighter than she had in a very long time. She and Rory had managed to build themselves a good life in the past; they'd been happy. But now the burden of secrecy, of pretending to be just another couple who remembered the First World War and had survived the worst of the Great Depression, was gone.

She could've happily lived out the rest of her life through the rest of the forties, the fifties and on, but _this_ , the twenty-first century was her time. In her blue floral peasant blouse and medium wash skinny jeans, she felt like she'd finally come home – even if she couldn't quite remember if these jeans were supposed to be quite this tight.

Smiling, she looked up at the bright blue sky and saw nothing but fluffy white clouds and some news helicopters. It really was over.

Time for something new to begin.

"You know," she said to Rory. "If the Silurians are alright with us touching their pteranodons, then we should ask them if they're willing to wait just a bit longer so we can go get the children. I think Timothy, in particular, would be over the moon at the chance to pet a dinosaur." She looked over at Tony pointedly. "I know and I don't care."

Tony closed his mouth and turned back to his conversation with Vision and Bill with a shrug.

Rory put an arm around her shoulder and she leaned into him with a sigh. "Well, I guess this is us starting from scratch again," she said.

"Not exactly..." said Rory.

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You know how you said there'd be no real point to taking money as inflation would make it worth almost nothing in the twenty-first century?"

"Yes, I do recall that conversation..."

"Well, it got me thinking about things that _wouldn't_ depreciate in value over time." He looked over to her with a twinkle in his eye. "What do you suppose a full sets of the Dodgers and Yankees 1944 roster baseball cards would be worth today? I have the full 1941 rosters too."

She stopped to stare at him. "You used a huge chunk of our life savings to buy baseball cards?"

"And several packs of stamps, collected some international ones from the neighbours too. Told them it was for Ben."

Amy couldn't help herself: she threw her head back and laughed. "That is the most ridiculously genius thing I have ever heard anyone do! You are so incredibly lucky our plan ended up working."

And then she grabbed him and kissed him.


	13. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

It was a beautiful day, the sun was shinning, the sky was blue and those clouds floating above the Millenium Centre looked like sun-bathing Yeti. Not that Yetis actually sunbathed all that much, given their propensity for cold, dark caves and snowy climates, but clouds weren't exactly known for forming in logical shapes. If they had been, they'll likely all resemble birds or perhaps some variety of flying blimp or airplane.

In any case, the beautiful summer's day seemed to have put a spring into everyone's steps, including the Doctor's, who was strolling around the Cardiff Bay with a bright smile on his face, his light beige jacket slung casually over his shoulder. He tipped his hat to a passing couple who nodded back briefly as they studied his outfit – it was a look he was used to as his outfit tended to rather look out-of-place just about everywhere but a cricket field. Then again, the fashion in the 2050s was decidedly odder than the usual Earth fare (he sincerely hoped he never regenerated into someone who liked bright-coloured pom poms).

Looking up to the sky, he noted the position of the sun and sighed. It was time to head back.

Still, rushing would be a waste of the lovely weather and so he turned, meandering his way back towards Porth Teigr where he'd left the TARDIS. It wasn't like he expected Tegan to be early from her shopping excursion, after all.

However, as all things must eventually come to an end, the Doctor finally rounded the corner from where he could see the TARDIS – with a highly annoyed-looking Tegan standing in front surrounded by shopping bags. Turlough stood next to her, hands in the pockets of his black school uniform pants, looking bored.

The Doctor winced. Apparently he'd taken a bit longer than he'd intended on his return trip. Ah well, they'd forgive him in due time.

He could tell the moment they'd noticed him, because Turlough perked up and Tegan put her hands on her hips and glared in his direction. The Doctor's smile widened.

The sparks coming out of Tegan's eyes were almost visible when suddenly a man stepped in front of him.

"Excuse me, Doctor?" he said, his accent sounding jarringly American.

The Doctor stopped, blinking at the man in surprise. It wasn't often that he was recognized by complete strangers on the street.

He smiled brightly at the man. "Hello," he said, observing him carefully. "I'm afraid I can't quite place you. Have we met somewhere before?"

The man continued to look entirely unfamiliar to him. He appeared to be in his late forties, possibly early fifties, with dark blond hair and a pointy face which made him look a bit like a modern elf. He smiled at the Doctor with a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

"My name is Tim," he said softly. "But I'm afraid I can't quite tell you how I know you, though we have met. Or, rather, I have met you and you will meet me at some point."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Fascinating. I don't often meet people from my own future. However, if you're aware that you can't tell me anything about my future, then why are you here?"

Tim shrugged. "For years I and my siblings have been coming here to Cardiff in the hopes that one of us would eventually bump into you," he said. "My sister works for UNIT, you see, and our parents were involved with it pretty much up until their respective deaths, so we've all seen pictures of your various regenerations."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "That implies that it'll be a future regeneration of me that will eventually meet you."

The grin that spread across the man's face made him instantly look ten years younger and much more elvish. "Oh, quite a few regenerations into your future, actually. In fact, it's so far into your future, I'm pretty sure you won't even remember meeting me anymore. At least, when I met you, you didn't seem to recognize me, or make the connection from today. Or maybe you're just that good of an actor."

"Any one of those are possible, of course. Even the memory of a Time Lord isn't limitless. My mind may contain all the memories of previous regenerations, however it requires concentration and, above all, an impetus for me to recall some specific details."

Tim nodded. "Yes, I've always figured as much. In my personal research I've always posited that the brain of a Time Lord must have an extra lobe not present in the human brain, as well as a drastically different chemical synapse structure which allows for more efficient neurotransmission." He paused. "Ah, I apologize, I seem to have digressed."

Amused, the Doctor waved off his apology. "You're a neuroscientist, I take it?"

"My fields are neuroscience and robotics."

"An interesting combination."

"I met some interesting people when I was quite young and that helped shaped my interests in ways that I think no one who knew me as a child quite expected. I certainly remember dreaming of becoming an adventurer, not a scientist."

"I trust I'm included in that group of interesting people?" the Doctor couldn't help but ask.

Tim laughed. "Oh, of course you are, Doctor. And not just meeting you in person, but through my parents' stories as well. Which brings me to my purpose in seeking you out."

He reached into his jacket's inner pocket and pulled out a paper envelope. It was curious, given that paper envelopes hadn't been used in well over two decades if his memory was correct.

"Could you please pass this on to River Song?" he asked.

The Doctor frowned. "I'm afraid I don't know anyone by that name."

The mischievous twinkle reappeared in Tim's eyes. "One day you will, Doctor," he said. "She's a rather memorable individual."

"Is she now?"

Perhaps she was a future companion of his, the Doctor mused. He was tempted to ask more, but managed to refrain. Knowing too much of one's personal future was dangerous, after all. For all he knew, this River Song would be an enemy. But then why would this man and his siblings have gone to all this effort to attempt to contact her?

"Surely, you're aware that there's the possibility than when I finally meet this person, that I might forget to pass on your letter?" he told Tim.

Tim just grinned. "Oh, I have the utmost confidence that River Song will get it." He looked towards the TARDIS and the Doctor's waiting companions. "However, I see I shouldn't detain you any longer. I wish you safe travels, Doctor. Or at least successful ones."

"Yes, I do seem to have a distressing lack of _safe_ travels, don't I?" the Doctor agreed with a sunny smile as he shook Tim's hand.

He watched the mysterious man walk away for a few moments before continuing on thoughtfully towards the TARDIS. Tegan and Turlough now looked curious rather than irritated and bored.

"What was that about?" Tegan asked him.

The Doctor looked down at the envelope in his hands. It was clean, though slightly creased and torn at one edge, as though it had been taken good care of but still couldn't avoid the wear and tear of years of being carried around from place to place. On the front, the name River Song was written in a feminine hand with big, bold letters.

"Something to do with my future," the Doctor finally answered her. "Nevermind that, though, I think it's about time for us to go."

Tegan's eyes narrowed at him. " _We've_ been waiting here for _you_!" she said.

"Ah. Well, I'm here now, so let's get going, shall we?"

"Why exactly were we here in the first place?" Turlough asked as the Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door.

"Refueling," the Doctor answered. "There's a rift in time and space in Cardiff, whose energy the TARDIS can absorb."

"And we couldn't just go back to Gallifrey because...?"

The Doctor made a face as he walked into the TARDIS, the other two trailing after him, Tegan somehow managing to carry her entire load of shopping bags.

"Because they'd have made me fill out paperwork and then stay for my inauguration," he replied slowly, glaring at the cheeky twinkle in the young man's eyes.

Tegan huffed. "Well I, for one, am more than happy to avoid Gallifrey for a while," she declared. "With our luck, we'd just end up right back in the Death Zone again."

"Thankfully, I'm fairly certain that's impossible," said the Doctor as he closed and locked the TARDIS door.

She glared at him. "That's what you said when you realized we were _in_ the Death Zone."

"Yes, well, no one's perfect."

He set their course and initiated the dematerialization process before Tegan had a chance to retort back.

* * *

River Song wandered into the TARDIS library and breathed in the smell of wood, paper, and binding glue. Between the dark wooden furniture, the plush red carpeting and the various potted plants (which remained in perfect health despite her never having seen the Doctor actually water them), everything in the room seemed determined to make a person forget they were in one of the most advanced spacecrafts in the known universe. Even the desk lamps were either oil or electric. She sometimes wondered just who had put it together.

The Doctor was in one of his tinkering moods and she'd left him to it, not in the mood for watching him re-route the same circuit a dozen times before deciding it had been best in its original state.

As she meandered through the stacks, she marveled at the eclectic nature of the Doctor's collection. There were books here from all four corners of the galaxy, everything from children's fables to scientific treatises. His Earth science fiction section was especially colourful. Next to first editions of pulp fiction novels from the 1940s, was "I, Robot" in its original Russian release, "War of the Worlds", "Day of the Triffids", and...

"The New Jedi Order?" River read out loud incredulously. "Why the hell do you have _this,_ Doctor _?"_

She picked it up off the shelf, as though somehow touching the book itself would give her answers. However, when she opened the book, something fell out. Blinking, she stared down at the plain while envelope laying at her feet. Her name was written across the front in familiar handwriting.

Inside, there was a letter.

 _Melody,_

 _We hope this letter will eventually make its way to you, though we don't know how long it will take. Years have passed since we last saw you and we've come to terms with the painful truth that we likely won't ever again. However, we didn't want to depart from this world without one last attempt to tell you that we love you. It's true that what should've been our life with you was viciously torn from us and for that we will never forgive those responsible. This does not mean that we aren't proud of the remarkable woman you became anyway. We are, very much so._

 _We have one, last request to make of you. Sometime after the two of us get stuck in 1930s New York City, we will find a way back to our present – I trust we don't have to explain why you cannot tell the Doctor about this. At that time, we will need your help to escape danger. Please, before you go to The Library, come help us, it might very well be our last opportunity to see one another. You'll know when the time is right for you, because the Doctor will give you a gift. A very precious, and entirely unexpected personal gift._

 _No matter what happens, always remember that we love you very much._

 _Your parents_

After the signature, there was a date, time, and place. River stared at it, ignoring the tears in her eyes, determined never to forget the details. She wondered how long the Doctor had had this letter. By its tone, it had to have been written when Amy and Rory – her parents – had traveled with the Doctor. She hadn't seen them in years now, like the Doctor, being unable to travel back to seen them for fear of doing damage to the timeline. But now it looked like she'd get one, last chance to see them again.

She smiled even as she wondered what sort of precious, unexpected personal gift the Doctor could possibly give her that he hadn't already.

* * *

Thanks so much for reading this story! I hope you enjoyed it. :) It was fun to write (even if a bit frustrating in how it just kept getting longer). And for those of you wondering, yes, that was the fifth Doctor there in the epilogue. Drop me a line if you enjoyed this, but please no spoilers for the second half of Doctor Who season ten for at least a couple of weeks because I haven't seen it yet.


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